Over the past year, there has been a great deal of controversy over the outfits worn by ski jumpers.
After a scandal over the size and design of the ski jumping uniforms for the Norwegian team; a number of disqualifications were issued.
There are now some new rules issued before the opening of the 2026 Winter Olympic games in Milan Cortina.
Spokesman for the international ski federation, FIS, the sport’s regulatory body Bruno Sassi noted, “there have been disqualifications in the past, many. It’s part of the sport. 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 much more than a skier jumping off of a ramp and hoping to be the one to land safely the farthest down the hill. A great deal of science goes into the sport with testing skis…and clothing…to find the most aerodynamic outfit that will allow the skier to “fly” through the air.
The journal “Frontiers in Sports and Active Living” conducted a study last October that revealed a single centimeter of fabric added to the circumference of a ski suit could increase a jump by 2.8 meters. Co-author of the study Sören Müller spoke on the study saying, “in most cases, enlargement of the suit is beneficial. 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.”
After the scandal that revealed members of the Norwegian ski jumping team were using ski suits that had been altered to allow for greater distance and cost the team’s leadership their jobs.
Former German Olympic champion Jens Weissflog called the scandal, “this is doping, just with a different needle.”
The FIS has brought in a coordinator to supervise gear screening and former Austrian ski jumper Mathias Hafele as the equipment expert.
Speaking on Hafele, Bruno Sassi said, “he used to make a make a living off of trying to make the most out of the rule book. Now he’s on our side putting together the new rule book.”
With new rules in place, two FIS controllers and a doctor will evaluate the athletes and their uniforms using 3-D to ensure nothing has been altered or changed. The new uniform design makes it more difficult to make any alterations.
Once the uniforms have been inspected and approved, tamper-proof microchips are placed throughout the suit to further alleviate any alterations or manipulations.
Taking from the world of football, a first suit violation earns a yellow card, with a second violation earning a red card; at which time the skier will be disqualified from the next event. A further punishment will be the team losing a slot for a skier in the competition.
Former Norwegian team ski jumper Rune Velta has taken over the role of head coach for the Norwegian team. Speaking on now having to restore the reputation and past glory of the Norwegian team Velta said, “it’s the hardest thing I’ve ever done. 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 added, “acceptance for a kind of minor error and mistakes are really low. We needed this summer to understand the standards and to learn kind of the line of the control and execution of the rules.”