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FIVE FEMALE OLYMPIANS DISQUALIFIED BECAUSE OF SUITS IN ONE OF THE ‘DARKER DAYS’
FOR SKI JUMPING

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Germany's Katharina Althaus competed in the Olympic mixed team event before her
disqualification. (Hannah Mckay/Reuters)
By Des Bieler
Today at 8:42 p.m. EST
By Des Bieler
Today at 8:42 p.m. EST
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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).

Want Olympics news as it happens? Download The Post’s app and turn on alert
notifications for Sports and Breaking News.ArrowRight

“They destroyed women’s ski jumping,” Germany’s Katharina Althaus said.

Althaus, who helped Germany win the mixed team event three times at the ski
jumping world championships, was among the women disqualified 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
Monday that she had worn Saturday, when she was allowed to compete in the
women’s normal hill individual event and finished sixth.

Jerry Brewer: Eileen Gu is an original, and the world is going to have to deal
with it

“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.”

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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 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,” Strate
added. “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.

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“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 Hüttel, 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.

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“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.)

A luger’s last Olympic shot never came. He gave his sled to the guys he lost to.

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.

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“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.”

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“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 the suits in question “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.”

Watch more:


German gymnasts at the Tokyo Olympics fought uniform status quo by wearing
unitards. It's a battle being fought elsewhere, too. (The Washington Post)


MORE ABOUT THE BEIJING OLYMPICS

Beijing Winter Olympics | Schedule and TV guide | Medal count

The latest: Highlights from Day 5 at the Beijing Winter Olympics

The Beijing Olympics are underway, the second straight Games to be held in front
of a limited number or no spectators. Here’s what to know about this year’s
Games.

These new sports will debut at this year’s Winter Games.

“These Olympics are in China, and that carries with it grave entanglements. The
lasting impact of these Games must not be to celebrate China. It must be to
scrutinize its leadership.” Read Barry Svrluga.

The Winter Olympics are tests not only of athletic achievement but of design and
engineering. In Beijing, you have to be well-equipped to win gold.

Want Olympics news as it happens? Download The Post’s app and turn on alert
notifications for Sports and Breaking News.

Show more
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