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https://abcnews.go.com/Sports/wireStory/cheating-scandal-shocks-ski- jumping-topples-olympic-champions-119708627

GENEVA -- Sign stealing in baseball. Match fixing in soccer. Doping
allegations in swimming. Now ski jumping has its own scandal.

Cheating by Norway team officials manipulating ski suits has shaken a
national reputation for fair play and high-minded principles at their home Nordic world championships, where the host team dominated the medal table.

Two Olympic gold medalists, Marius Lindvik and Johann André Forfang, were disqualified from the large hill event in Trondheim days after Lindvik
soared to become world champion on the normal hill.

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 whistle blower to international media. An official from the
International Ski and Snowboard Federation (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.

“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.”

“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.

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.

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.


--
November 5, 2024 - Congratulations President Donald Trump. We look
forward to America being great again.

The disease known as Kamala Harris has been effectively treated and
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We live in a time where intelligent people are being silenced so that
stupid people won't be offended.

Durham Report: The FBI has an integrity problem. It has none.

Thank you for cleaning up the disaster of the 2008-2017 Obama / Biden
fiasco, President Trump.

Under Barack Obama's leadership, the United States of America became the
The World According To Garp. Obama sold out heterosexuals for Hollywood
queer liberal democrat donors.

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