"Bigger suits could increase the time ski jumpers are able to stay aloft, given the possibility of increased wind resistance... '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 [Katharina Althaus] said.... 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. '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.)... 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.'"
From "Five female Olympians disqualified because of suits in one of the ‘darker days’ for ski jumping" (WaPo).
I love the name Althaus, but I must say, looking at the photograph, below, that the very long crotch on those pants seems to give something of a wingsuit — or flying-squirrel — effect. I can see why competitors would seek every advantage they can get from their gear, but if they are technically in violation, they take on the risk of disqualification. It also looks bad, and so — to paraphrase Kasper — it seems not to be appropriate for ladies from a fashion point of view. Do looks matter? Is the Olympics about getting us to watch?
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"Is the Olympics about getting us to watch?"
Ladies and gentlemen, I give you women's curling.
If big suits are an advantage in ski jumping, I'm thinking Stacey Adams would be a lock for gold with just a form fitting suit. So, why isn't she or Hillary on the team?
Bikini Ski Jumping. Now that might be worth a watch, like Beach Volleyball.
Can't touch this : )
Btw, if the women are actually guys (you know what I mean), then they need the extra room in the crotch.
Don't judge...
It makes me happy to watch one of the most corrupt institutions in the world self immolate.
Hopefully all of these athletes organize a true Olympics not run by corrupt shitheads.
So many corrupt worthless shitheads are being outed for who they are lately.
Maybe the NCAA can go next with the rest of the university system.
That picture does show a suit feature that doesn't make sense except as a wing to give additional lift. I can't believe the solution is not to simply standardize the suits. Let teams have their own colors and logos but, in terms of fabric, cut, etc., they should all be the same.
What if Althaus is a closeted trans and she needed extra… leg room… knowhaimean, knowhaimean, nudge nudge.
It's interesting that for a few days every four years, like clockwork, we are directed to pay attention to things like ski jumping, that we choose to ignore the previous three years, eleven months and 350 days. And by" interesting" I mean "stupid".
They need some sort of clear standard for suits at these events. From now on rule should be "camel toe or no go."
As always, women looking for an advantage by some means other than following the rules of their sport. And then whining about it in the media in order to have their feelings validated.
The "flying squirrel" controversy may garner more interest in this Olympics than anything else. Whatever, like a good chunk of the US population I'm not watching this Olympics.
This is not news among professional and Olympic athletes.
Hockey goalies wear vastly oversized pads to expand their profile and block the goal.
Long ago bobsleds were standardized to the old German specs to stop a technology arms race.
Speed skaters wear body suits and switched to faster clap skates.
Swimmers shave their bodies, and wear caps and swimsuits designed to reduce drag.
Be aware that those competitors who aggressively push the rulebook may simultaneously cheat but think they can hide it. Some focus on rules mainly to keep their (inequitable) advantages. Keep this in mind when analyzing racial, gender, and transgender politics. Foxes volunteer to guard the hen house because it makes for easy eating.
Yes- the pants portion looks like it is intentionally too big for exactly purposes of increasing lift. My only quibble is this- if these were previously ok, and no rules were changed in the interim, then it does seem unfair to make it an issue now.
Your German cousin Ms. Althaus complained, "... I have been checked so many times ..." and never before disqualified.
How exactly does one check whether the crotch of some woman's bodysuit is "too large"? Inquiring minds want to know.
Your German cousin Ms. Althaus complained, "... I have been checked so many times ..." and never before disqualified.
How exactly does one check whether the crotch of some woman's bodysuit is "too large"? Inquiring minds want to know.
Clearly discrimination against minority name holders! I am surprised so many athletes attended these Olympics with this type of nonsense very predictable.
Clearly discrimination against minority name holders! I am surprised so many athletes attended these Olympics with this type of nonsense very predictable.
Clearly discrimination against minority name holders! I am surprised so many athletes attended these Olympics with this type of nonsense very predictable.
it seems not to be appropriate for ladies from a fashion point of view.
Seems appropriate for both cis and trans ladies.
Is the Olympics about getting us to watch?
If so, it is failing. I think one of the joys I used to have watching the Olympics with the national pride and the joy it brought. Since we've been told in the US, particularly by the people hosting the Olympics on our television, that national pride is bad; then it seems wrong to watch it. I did watch some of the summer games to see if NBC would mention the FBI sitting on the US women's gymnastic molestation concerns, but NBC didn't mention it. NBC did find time to talk about USWNT soccer attempt to get paid more money after agreeing to a contract. I tuned out, and I note that none of the viewing was about the actual competition, but that's sport's media these days.
She must be proud. What a thigh gap!
I've watched bits of the games. It looks like China didn't get a winter.
The ski and snow events look Potemkin Village.
Considering China's destruction of the earths environment - you'd think we'd hear more outrage from American Leftists?
I especially love the giant nuclear stacks in the background.
Missing are the images of Uyghurs or the dogs who are tortured before eaten... or that lovely Fauci-sponsored lab where the lab-virus was built and released.
F the left and F the chi coms. Censorship Soviets who can all die in a fire.
I am guessing the teams who these jumpers belonged to were attempting to push the limits of the envelope in the suit design to gain just a fraction of a competitive edge. They got caught. This should be on the teams, not the jumpers, but the athletes paid the price. Just like in the 1970’s when the East German women swimmers were given “vitamins” daily by their coaches and team medical personnel during training that turned out to be male steroids. Yes, those women were skilled swimmers but were just a bit bigger and stronger than their competitors, like former male Lia Thomas is today, and thus crushed their competition. With PED testing today, now it is the equipment the competitors use that can be designed to wring out that little extra edge between winning and losing. As I said this is on the teams (unless the athletes were directly involved in the equipment decisions).
One would think this issue would have been finalized during the qualifying events leading up to the Olympics.
Not to don my tin foil hat, but are the Chinese in contention for medals in this event?
#Notgonnawatch #chinaisasshole
How much weight have the athletes been losing from the awful food? Enough to make their uniforms baggy? Probably.
Ski-jumpuh Roquet von Squirl
Of course costumes matter from many of the events. It's a primary topic of conversation for the ice jiggling events featuring girls, women, gay men, and Asians. Olympics is crack for women who otherwise don't watch sports. So suffering a penalty for long crotch is entirely within the spirit of the games. Slim your crotch, ladies!
Flying squirrels not allowed.
The female skijumpers should have immediately disrobed and taken their place in line to jump.
Buying online from the Rocket J. Squirrel® Collection should have been their first clue.
By the way, have you seen the slim crotches on the lady speed skaters? Ski jumpers, take a lesson from the speed skaters and not only won't you be disqualified, but they might put ski jumping on prime time. Translated from Chinese the original Chinese phrase "Srim crotch good, long crotch bad": "Slim crotch good, long crotch bad."
Wait, you mean that wide load isn't all hers?
I saw a woman in line at the grocery the other day wearing pants that had a very wide crotch/leg area. She, too, seemed to stay in place longer than anyone else. There might be something to this.
Althouse is body shaming.
The flying squirrel would be a great ski-jumping nickname. I haven’t heard one of those since UK’s Eddie the Eagle and his underbite captivated us years ago.
If there were some way to not watch the Olympics more than I’m not watching them now this would be reason.
...women disqualified Monday when FIS ruled that their suits were 'too big and offered an aerodynamic advantage.'
Okay, now rule on penises and "Y" chromosomes.
Certainly something that should have been resolved before the games. Not fair to the athletes or fans.
Has David Byrne weighed in on this?
If Big Suits are outlawed, only outlaws will have Big Suits.
appropriate for ladies from a fashion point of view.
Do looks matter? Is the Olympics about getting us to watch?
you know (you Really Do) that if women ski jumpers wore bikini's, gilbar would be more inclined to watch
I'm skipping the Olympics completely, for the first time I can remember. Canada usually does better in winter than summer, and all that, but China is a big factor.
Do the winter games have a tendency to get ridiculous? Long-track speed skating was considered not TV friendly enough (among other things, superb athletes can make it look easy). So they introduce short-track--a rink roughly the size of a hockey rink. They have to be leaning at virtually every second because of all the corners. They bump each other a lot. One fall and you're out. What? Not two times out of three or something? Energetic and exciting, yes; but crazy. The big ski jump is something that in a way everyone can relate to, but then there has been Eddie the Eagle, the British guy with thick glasses. He did well in the very small world of British ski jumpers at the time, but internationally he was piss poor, so after his big performance they made the Eddie the Eagle rule--you had to hit a qualifying standard. The "agony of defeat" on ABC sports featured the 1970 crash of Vinko Bogataj, a Slovenian who skied for Yugoslavia.
"More recently, former Olympian Nick Fairall was left paralyzed with a spinal cord injury and modern-day ski jumpers probably remember the crash or have seen it on YouTube."
Clothing turns into a sail? I think there's a movie where Buster Keaton gets out a huge map while he rides a railway push car, and as he opens it, the map becomes a sail.
1: Why in the world isn the FIS ruling MONDAY on this? Why weren't they told 4 months ago: your suits are too big. Get something that fits these rules, or you will be disqualified
2: What aren't they being given the option to wear a different suit?
I'm not watching the CCP Olympics. This idiocy makes me even happier that I'm not watching / plaything attention to them
In an article I read about this, one DQ jumper noted two things of interest:
1. These same suits have been approved at every international competition in the last year leading up to the Olympics, but suddenly (and without warning) there is a new protocol for evaluating the suits.
2. All of the DQ'd jumpers regardless of team had one thing in common. They were quarantined for COVID while in China. Athletes in quarantine have been very vocal about the starvation rations quarantined athletes are being given with many documenting how much weight and strength they lost while in quarantine. Why does this matter? Because the suit standard for ski jumping measures the fit of the suit to the athlete's body. The claim or implication is that these suits became non-compliant because the athletes are being starved.
The wing suit guys should take cue from this and come up with a new event for the X-Games. Landings might be fun to watch.
Ok, enough with the technology and the cheating. From now on, ALL Olympic events must be done in the spirit of the original Olympics: Naked, and slathered in olive oil. With modern video editing, the less-respectable bits can be blurred and everyone can watch and enjoy the aesthetics of the human body, if not the events themselves.
Of course, medical staff will have to watch carefully for signs of frostbite.
Bonus: We'll know when men are competing as women.
Just finished watching the four part miniseries "Meddling." Great piece of reporting, and excellent television to boot, about France, Russia, and the Russian mob no less, successfully fixing the judging so that the pairs gold went to Russia in return for awarding the Ice Dancing gold to France in 2002. Yes, corrupt top to bottom, and little different today. The corruption cherry on top is several clips Of that crap weasel James Comey with a Mit Romney cameo thrown in for good measure.
Something changed hands somewhere for this to come up now, after the athletes have already assembled and the Olympics underway, rather than earlier. Particularly, since the very best teams were those targeted for disqualification. Were they blindsided, or did they know they weren't compliant and thought their preeminence would protect them? Did they think they had a deal and were double crossed? Was it Chinese payback to the West and the hated Japanese? It could be anything, but it all stinks regardless.
'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.)...
Yes, we can mock him now, but it's a different world than it was in the past, and not necessarily a better one.
Kasper had a record of saying "outrageous" things:
In February 2019, Kasper stated in an interview that he preferred working with dictatorships over environmentalists. He also questioned climate change and welcomed global warming. A nonprofit organization Protect Our Winters condemned the statement and demanded that Kasper resign from the presidency of FIS. Following the controversy, Kasper apologized for his comments.
It looks like the "big suit" was inspired by the wing suits people are flying around in, but I bet if you asked the manufacturers they could come up with something more inspired by David Byrne in the Talking Heads videos of the Eighties.
Hell, I'd let them all strap on Rogallo wings and see how far they go!
I feel the same way about PEDs and Steroids. BIGGER, FASTER, STRONGER!
News of Russian Olympic Committee girl skater taking banned substance, supposedly for angina, before team event, seems a more serious violation. Too bad, since she is a superstar. But would get US moved up to gold.
I haven't watched one minute of the Olympics, and when an NBC ad for them come up on my twitter feed, I report it as political, or misleading, etc. I figure sooner or later I will trip some kind of algorithm and they will ban me.
Just plain weird of the Chinese to crack down on these suits. The suits ski jumpers wear have looked pretty much like that for years now.
Now reading that there won't be a disqualification in the team skating because offender under 18.
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