Bjørn Wirkola

Who is Bjørn Wirkola?

Bjørn Wirkola is former ski jumper and footballer from Norway.

He became World Champion in Oslo in 1966, winning both the large and normal hill competitions. The 1966 FIS Nordic World Ski Championships were also held in conjunction with the Holmenkollen ski festival, making Wirkola the Holmenkollen champion as well. Wirkola won the Four Hills Tournament from 1967 to 1969, and is still the only ski jumper who has won this tournament three years in a row. He also competed at three Winter Olympics: in 1964 he finished eleventh in the Nordic combined, in 1968 Winter Olympics in Grenoble, he achieved his best finish with a fourth place in the individual normal hill, 0.6 points behind the bronze medalist Baldur Preiml of Austria, and the 1972 Winter Olympics, where he finished 37th in the wind-ravaged event in the Okurayama large hill.

For his achievements as a ski jumper, Wirkola was awarded the Holmenkollen medal in 1968. The common parlance expression jumping after Wirkola has come to refer to situations where one embarks on a task where one's predecessor has done a particularly good job – or where one is unlikely to succeed.