5 female Olympians disqualified because of suits in one of the ‘darker days’ for ski jumping
The disqualification of five ski jumpers at the Winter Olympics because of the suits they wore didn’t just result in an unexpected podium for the inaugural mixed team event. The abrupt ouster of those participants – all women – also resulted in howls of protest and outrage directed at the International Ski Federation (FIS).
“They destroyed women’s ski jumping,” said Germany’s Katharina Althaus.
Althaus, who helped Germany win the mixed team event three times at the ski jumping world championships, was among the women disqualified on Monday when FIS ruled that their suits were “too big and offered an aerodynamic advantage.” Bigger suits could increase the time ski jumpers are able to stay aloft, given the possibility of increased wind resistance. However, another disqualified jumper, Norway’s Silje Opseth, pointed out that she was wearing the same suit on Monday that she had worn Saturday, when she was allowed to compete in the women’s normal hill individual event and finished sixth.
“I think they checked it in a new way today compared to what they had done previously,” Opseth said, according to Reuters. “I think it’s very strange that they would suddenly change how they do it in the middle of a tournament. . . . I don’t know what to say. I’m really just shaken.”
Opseth was one of several of the jumpers reportedly brought to tears by their disqualifications, including Althaus – who won a silver medal in Saturday’s individual event – and Japan’s Sara Takanashi. The other two women ruled out of the mixed team event by FIS were Austria’s Daniela Iraschko-Stolz and Norway’s Anna Odine Stroem. Each team in the event, which was making its Olympics debut, included two women and two men.
None of the disqualified athletes’ teams made the medals podium, despite the fact that Germany, Austria, Norway and Japan entered Monday as the favorites, along with Slovenia, which took gold. The Russian Olympic Committee won silver in a surprising result and, in a stunning development, an underfunded Canadian quartet got the bronze, giving that country its first Olympic ski jumping medal of any kind.
“I don’t think this is a bittersweet medal at all,” Canadian team member Abigail Strate told reporters after the event (via the National Post), referring to a controversy FIS’s own website described as “the main topic of the day.”
“Equipment is very important in sport and disqualifications happen,” added Strate. “It’s a very common thing to happen in ski jumping, and the fact that it happened at the Olympics just goes to show that they were taking the rules pretty strictly and seriously because it is the absolute highest level of sport.”
Althaus, who has competed on the World Cup circuit since 2011, had a different take.
“I have been checked so many times in 11 years of ski jumping, and I have never been disqualified once, I know my suit was compliant,” the German star said, via Agence France-Presse.
“This is a parody, but I am not laughing. . . . It is outrageous that this happens with the four biggest ski-jump nations,” said Horst Huttel, Germany’s head of Nordic events.
Adding a layer to the expressions of disappointment and anger Monday was the history of sexism in ski jumping. The sport is among the eight that go back to the original Winter Olympics program in 1924, but women weren’t allowed to participate until 2014, after a group of athletes filed a lawsuit in 2009, ahead of the 2010 Vancouver Olympics.
“It’s like jumping down from, let’s say, about two meters above the ground about a thousand times a year, which seems not to be appropriate for ladies from a medical point of view,” former FIS president Gian Franco Kasper infamously claimed in 2005. (Kaser, a Swiss native who held that position from 1998 to 2021, did not have a medical background.)
At this year’s Games in Beijing, the Nordic combined event remains the lone men-only holdout, mixing ski jumping with cross-country skiing. Male ski jumpers also have two medal events not available to women: large hill and a single-gender team competition. The mixed team event reflected an effort by Olympic organizers to be more inclusive, but its debut was marred by the disqualifications.
“This is something we should have cleaned up in before the Olympics,” Norwegian team official Clas Brede Braathen said Monday. “The sport of ski jumping has experienced one of its darker days today.”
“I’m in pain on behalf of our sport,” he added. “We were going to introduce a new event. The girls were to get a new event in the Olympics, and that’s how it ends. And why are only girls being disqualified?”
In a statement, FIS said that the suits in questions “were produced exclusively for the Olympic Games and were therefore not previously tested” by the governing body. FIS also noted that there was “no official protest by a team against any of the disqualifications.”
In an Instagram post, Althaus wrote in German, “I have no words for the decisions that were made today. Our sport was damaged as a result. Athletes and their dreams were destroyed. . . . It was one of the most important competitions for us women, a premiere for the entire sport and then something like that!! I am so disappointed and angry.
“We really gave everything to be here and all showed our best jumps. I’m devastated and can’t understand it.”
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