Two Norwegian ski jumpers are now suspended and under formal suspicion in a cheating scandal, the International Ski and Snowboard Federation (FIS) said Wednesday in widening its investigation of altered ski suits.
Marius Lindvik and Johann Andre Forfang, who are both Olympic gold medallists, can no longer compete in a World Cup event in Oslo that starts Thursday.
“FIS has provisionally suspended three Norwegian team officials and two athletes who are being investigated for their alleged involvement in illegal equipment manipulation,” the Switzerland-based governing body said in a statement.
Lindvik and Forfang have denied involvement in cheating at the world championships held last week at Trondheim that their head coach and equipment manager already confessed to.
Though both athletes were backed by the Norwegian team insisting they knew nothing about deliberately altered ski suits, their head coach and equipment manager confessed and were suspended.
The scandal has shocked the ski jumping world, raising questions about how widespread this practice is, and tarnished Norway’s standing for honesty in sports.
What has emerged involves team officials manipulating pre-approved and microchipped suits to increase their size and improve aerodynamics to help athletes fly further.
It was revealed in footage secretly filmed from behind a curtain then sent by a whistleblower to international media. An official from the FIS said the illegal alterations were only subsequently confirmed by tearing apart the seams of the crotch area on the offending Norwegian ski suits.
The scandal has unfolded in Norway which always scores high in Transparency International’s anti-corruption index, tied for fifth in the most recent global ranking.
Norwegian sports officials also led on controversial issues by taking public positions in 2022 in refusing to host Russian athletes days after the full invasion of Ukraine and challenging soccer World Cup host Qatar on human rights.
The same Norwegian ski federation that helped push FIS to exclude Russians three years ago now finds its staff and star athletes under investigation by the Switzerland-based governing body.
‘Killing our principles’
“The only thing that matters for FIS is to leave this process 100% convinced that the sport is free from any form of manipulation,” its secretary general Michel Vion said in a statement Tuesday.
Athletes and officials from across the world left Trondheim on Sunday sad and disappointed, FIS race director for men’s ski jumping, Sandro Pertile, told The Associated Press in an interview.
“Norway is a country that we all know as a leader in human rights, in equality, integration. I cannot believe that there is a [cheating] system,” Pertile said in an online call Tuesday, suggesting there was “a few individuals that went really far over the limits.”
If the infractions seemed obscure and technical to non-fans, the breach of trust was severe: “This action was somehow killing our principles, our style, our joy for our discipline,” Pertile said.
The Norwegian federation acted when FIS officials found evidence that proved what the secret footage alleged, and had led to formal protests from Austria, Slovenia and Poland.
Norway men’s head coach Magnus Brevig and equipment manager Adrian Livelten admitted they had cheated, though just on one occasion, ahead of the large hill event held Saturday.
“We regret it like dogs, and I’m terribly sorry that this happened,” Brevig said. “I don’t really have anything else to say other than that we got carried away in our bubble.”
Livelten apologized to the disqualified athletes plus “sponsors, the jumping family and the Norwegian people” for an act of cheating he said was “completely unacceptable.”
How did Norway cheat?
“It was an extremely high level manipulation,” race director Pertile said of the Norwegian actions that were “absolutely by far the worst” in his five years in the job. “We destroyed the suit to be able to find this adjustment.”
The Italian official said alterations were not detected by eye and only were revealed by examining the seams of the crotch area of the ski suits after the competition.
Extra material in the same color had been inserted that added weight and helped to lower the material between an athlete’s legs as they took off into the flight phase. More surface area hitting the air helps add to flight time, Pertile said.
FIS previously said a 5% bigger surface area of a suit helps an athlete fly further, though the exact distance added is not known, Pertile said.
What are the rules?
FIS has an extensive 11-page document of rules for measuring and verifying ski jumpers’ suits during the season. Multiple RFID chips are attached and noted on a FIS register, after which a suit must not be altered. Any attempt to remove a chip should make the suit ineligible and the chips are deactivated.
One suit is allowed at World Cup events and two more for a world championships or Winter Olympics, though just one is used on each competition day.
What is the investigation about?
FIS investigators are now likely to want to closely inspect all the Norwegian team suits, in men’s and women’s ski jumping and Nordic combined, at the world championships.
Lindvik’s gold medal in normal hill is sure to be looked at, though it is unclear how far back an investigation could reach for results at World Cup events this season or beyond to previous seasons. Lindvik was Olympic champion in large hill at the 2022 Beijing Winter Games.
The ski jumping World Cup season continues for three more weekends, starting Thursday in Oslo.