Ski jumping's suit trouble is back ahead of Olympics as numerous athletes disqualified

The right suit can help send a ski jumper soaring to gold. The wrong suit will get you grounded.

Ski jumping faces more controversy with six months to go until the Winter Olympics after the first high-level competition of the new season saw numerous athletes disqualified over ill-fitting suits. The governing body says it’s “perfectly normal.”

The ski jumping world was rocked in March by the discovery of illegally altered suits on the Norwegian team at the world championships. The International Ski Federation investigated officials and athletes over those changes which could help the wearer soar through the air for longer with the suit’s larger surface area.

In Saturday’s first event of the 2025-26 season — a summer Grand Prix event on an artificial surface in France — six male ski jumpers were disqualified because of suit issues such as waist size and three more were “not permitted to start.” Another jumper from Japan was blocked from competing as the Grand Prix continued Sunday.

The federation told The Associated Press in an e-mailed statement that it’s treating the spate of disqualifications as the natural result of tightening up the rules after the Norwegian suit scandal.

https://apnews.com/article/ski-jumping-suits-disqualified-winter-olympics-4e081c439ce83ce9e1a890b8258a101a

All I could think of was a line from an old song, "His clothes they were fast, but the slopes they were faster, that's the last of SuperSkier we shall see."