‘PUPPET THEATER’

Five Female Ski Jumpers Disqualified From Olympic Finals Over Baggy Clothing

“It is outrageous that this happens with the four biggest ski-jump nations,” one sports official said.

A series of bizarre disqualifications involving loose-fitting suits marred the inaugural mixed team ski jumping competition at the Beijing Olympics on Tuesday. The disqualifications affected five female athletes, taking four of the sport’s heavyweight nations—Germany, Japan, Norway, and Austria—out of the event. When it became clear that the jumpers’ suits had been deemed too baggy, ostensibly giving them a flight advantage, officials were quick to express their outrage. “This is a parody, but I am not laughing,” a German sports official said. The Germans’ national team coach, Stefan Horngacher, echoed the sentiment, saying, “For me it is a puppet theater… I am unbelievably angry and I don’t understand it. We had super jumps. You can only be disappointed with this.” Norwegian chief of sports Clas Brede Braathen said he was “in pain on behalf of our sport” and questioned why it was “only girls being disqualified.” Though ski jumping has been an Olympic sport since 1924, women were only allowed to compete for the first time in 2014. In 2005, the then-head of the International Ski Federation explained that jumping “seems not to be appropriate for ladies from a medical point of view.”