Norwegian Cheating Harms All Ski Jumpers
I guess it was only a matter of time until somebody did it, but it surprises me that it was the Norwegian team who cheated by manipulating their ski jumping equipment. Admittedly, it’s one of the biggest and most organized teams, so they were able to pull it off, and they’re also in the fight for top positions, so they have the motive, especially since they hosted the Nordic World Ski Championships and then obviously also wanted to do well in Raw Air, but I just wouldn’t have seen them as having the necessary mindset, and others seem to share that feeling. Not that it’s in any way certain that they were the only ones to at least attempt something like this, of course, but they actually pulled it off and then they were discovered, so the fact is undeniable, and I’m actually somewhat surprised that, at least so far, the only ones who are suspended are the head coach and equipment manager, who confessed, the assistant coach, and at this point five male ski jumpers, and in case of the jumpers the suspension is provisional. I mean, for something like that to be pulled off, pretty much everyone had to be in on it, which makes the attempts by the jumpers to say that they had no knowledge of what was going on quite laughable, and an even further embarrassment.
Still, those five include Norway’s top three jumpers, all of them currently in the top 15 and Johann Andre Forfang having still been in the fight for third place by the end of the season, so this should clarify some matters in both the individual and the country standings, though it also means less of a competition at the top in the season’s remaining rounds. But the bigger question is just when did they start doing this and what results were impacted, because that could also affect the results of others who are currently in the fight for a top position, including the championship battle between Tschofenig and Hoerl.
And then, on top of the stain that this puts on the sport, there’s the way the equipment control policy was changed as a result of this, with jumpers only allowed one suit until the end of the season, a second one only being made available “in case of irreparable damage”, and all suits will be kept by the FIS, only being made available to the jumpers half an hour before a jump and needing to be returned within 30 minutes of the jump… Which is what tends to happen, treating everyone as a criminal because a few are, making changes that harm those who follow the rules and likely have the worst impact on those of lesser means or abilities, who might want to use other opportunities to train, using their actual equipment, which will also be used in the major official competitions, or simply take the time to get more used to it and extract the most from it, and will now be unable to do so anymore. Admittedly, at the moment this decision is only supposed to apply until the end of the current season, but it seems highly unlikely that they won’t stick to it or something like it in the future as well.
