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The difference between winning an Olympic medal in ski jumping or being disqualified could come down to a bit of fabric.
A larger suit can extend a ski jumper’s flight by several meters but it could violate rules that have become more stringent after the Norwegian team was caught cheating at last year’s world championships by manipulating the crotch area in the uniforms of its top two male jumpers.
Regulators added new measures this season before the Milan Cortina Winter Games to ensure all competitors play by the same rules after the scandal rocked the sport in March.
“There have been disqualifications in the past, many. It’s part of the sport,” said Bruno Sassi, spokesman for the international ski federation, FIS, the sport’s regulatory body. “But there had never been that kind of a brazen attempt to not only bend the rules, but like downright do something … to cheat the system in a way that it is very different from simply having a suit that is a tad too long or a tad too loose.”
Ski jumping is as much a science as an art. Teams of experts test skis and clothing in wind tunnels to maximize the aerodynamics at play long before jumpers try to achieve the perfect takeoff, flying form and landing.
A study published in October in the journal Frontiers in Sports and Active Living showed that adding 1 cm (0.4 inches) of fabric to the circumference of the suit could increase a jump by 2.8 meters (9.2 feet) — enough to separate a winner from an also-ran.
“In most cases, enlargement of the suit is beneficial,” said co-author Sören Müller, who heads ski jumping research at the Institute for Applied Training Science in Leipzig, Germany. “However, the area stretched by the V-position of the legs in the crotch area is the most noticeable and also offers the greatest advantage.”
The scandal
Ski jumpers have often pushed the limits on the size of their suits but video shot by a whistleblower was stunning because it captured Norwegian team officials in the act of cheating.
Head coach Magnus Brevik, assistant coach Thomas Lobben and staff member Adrian Livelten were recently banned from the sport for 18 months for tampering with the suits before the men’s large hill event. Extra material had been sewn into the crotch to stiffen and add surface area that would help during takeoff.
The alterations could not be spotted and were only found when the seams were examined after the contest.
“We regret it like dogs, and I’m terribly sorry that this happened,” Brevik said at the time.
The violation cost defending Olympic large hill ski jump gold medalist Marius Lindvik a world championship silver medal and brought shame to the team from Norway, the nation that invented ski jumping and has historically dominated the sport.
Lindvik and teammate Johann André Forfang, a two-time Olympic medalist, accepted three-month suspensions that allowed them to compete in this season’s events. Neither was charged with knowing about the stitch witchery but FIS said they “should have checked and asked questions about the night-time adjustments.”
The discovery caused outrage in the tight-knit ski jumping community.
“This is doping,” former German Olympic champ Jens Weissflog told German newspaper Bild, “just with a different needle.”
The scandal led Norway to sack its men’s team leadership.
New Rules
In the wake of the cheating, FIS has modified its rules and brought in a coordinator to oversee screening of gear and hired former Austrian ski jumper Mathias Hafele to work as equipment expert.
“He used to make a make a living off of trying to make the most out of the rule book,” Sassi said. “Now he’s on our side putting together the new rule book.”
Before ski jumping events, two FIS controllers and a doctor will use improved 3-D measurements to evaluate athletes in their uniforms. The shape of the suits will make it harder to tamper with arm and leg cuffs and more difficult to lower the crotch to provide more surface area.
After suits pass the control checkpoint, tamper-proof microchips are affixed throughout the suit to prevent manipulation. Scanners will be able to tell before and after the jump if the chips are all in place.
A system like in soccer will also be applied so that anyone disqualified for an equipment violation will get a yellow card. A subsequent violation will lead to a red card and disqualification from the next event and a team will also lose a slot for a skier in the competition.
Eyes on Norway
After the scandal, Rune Velta, a former Norwegian team ski jumper, took over as head coach in June and was given the difficult task of restoring Norway’s reputation.
“It’s the hardest thing I’ve ever done,” Velta said. “We are building everything around the athletes from scratch. We started five months ago with zero and now we have a team around them to make them perform.”
Velta, who as Swiss coach last year had publicly criticized the cheating, feels that Norway is under more scrutiny this season.
During the summer ski jumping season when competitors slide down ceramic or porcelain tracks and land on bristly plastic mats, the team tried to adjust to the new ski suit dimensions.
“Acceptance for a kind of minor error and mistakes are really low,” Velta said. “We needed this summer to understand the standards and to learn kind of the line of the control and execution of the rules.”
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