It is to the newspaper Blick that the Swiss reveals how the fraud with ski jumping suits was committed even before the scandal with Norway's national team during the World Championship in Trondheim recently.
Besides the trick with hairspray, Andreas Küttel says that he early in his career heard that jumpers exchanged to larger suits after the first jump.
Cheated with glue
If you were controlled after the first jump, you could assume that you wouldn't be checked after the second jump, says the 45-year-old, who won World Championship gold in large hill 2009, to Blick, according to Norwegian newspaper Nettavisen.
A former tailor in Norway's national team claims that the Norwegians applied glue to the suits during a competition in 2021. This was to make the fabric stiffer and thus get better flying capacity in the air.
The glue became shiny and disappeared. And when we bent in the suit and used it, it dissolved after each jump. The suit passed all controls, says tailor Fredrik Bjerkeengen to Norwegian VG.
Bjerkeengen mentions to VG a total of three incidents where the suits were manipulated. The tailor claims that the former sports manager Clas Brede Bråthen, who held the position for over 20 years, was present when the manipulation was carried out. This Bråthen denies.
World Championship silver medalist Marius Lindvik – who also won the competition in 2021 with glue on the suit – and fifth-placed Johann Forfang were disqualified during the championship on home ground after it was revealed that the Norwegians had sewn in extra and stiffer thread in the seams.
"Relieved"
Since then, the International Ski Federation (Fis) has discovered that three more Norwegians jumped with similar suits during the World Championship and they have now been suspended. Additionally, three other Norwegian national team jumpers – including Johan Remen Evensen – claim to have known that they competed with rule-violating suits.
I feel relieved that more dare to step forward. I stand by what I said and know it's the truth. That's how the whole ski jumping circus has functioned, says Evensen, who retired in 2012, to Nettavisen.
