U.S. women’s ice hockey dominates Czechia in opener
Hailey Scamurra scored twice while three of her teammates also added goals in Team USA’s 5-1 victory over Czechia. Both teams opened group play with U.S. Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio in attendance at Milano Rho Ice Hockey Arena.
The game was essentially put out of reach early in the second period. Already holding a 1-0 lead on a power-play goal in the first period from Alex Carpenter, Joy Dunne and Scamurra each scored goals within 83 seconds. Tessa Janecke earned the assists on both scores. Hilary Knight added another goal late in the period to give the U.S. a 4-1 lead.
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Czechia scored its lone goal when Barbora Jurickova left the penalty box and received a pass for a breakaway to cut the deficit to 3-1. But Knight answered shortly thereafter.
The U.S. will next face Finland on Saturday in Group A play with face-off scheduled for 10:40 a.m. ET. That is, if Finland is healthy enough to compete. (See below.)
U.S. defeats Norway and Switzerland in mixed doubles curling
Team USA took the ice in mixed doubles curling on Thursday, one day after eight other countries made their debut.
Facing defending silver medalist Norway, Cory Thiesse and Korey Dropkin took an early 1-0 lead before the Norwegians rallied with three points in the second end of the match. The two teams then battled back and forth, with the U.S. tying the score during the third end before Norway took a two-point lead after the fourth.
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Norway held a 6-4 lead going into the seventh end before Team USA tied the score at 6. In the final end, the U.S. took a two-point lead and Norway’s final shot fell short, giving Thiesse and Dropkin the 8-6 victory.
The U.S. later faced Switzerland in a match that carried far less drama. The Swiss did take a 2-1 lead in the second end, but Team USA rallied to gain two points in the third end when Thiesse knocked away Switzerland’s stone. The U.S. increased its lead to 5-2 after the fourth end and employed a defensive strategy through the rest of the match, knocking Switzerland’s stones out of the way and creating pressure to make perfect shots. Ultimately, the Swiss couldn’t hit the mark and Team USA won 7-4.
Up next for Thiesse and Dropkin is Canada and the Czech Republic on Friday.
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Lindsey Vonn ‘not giving up’ Alpine downhill, despite torn ACL
Vonn showed footage of her doing barbell squats, agility drills, side lunges and box jumps while wearing a brace on her injured left knee. If she can handle that work, she can seemingly handle the rigors of the Alpine downhill skiing course, something that doctors have stated is very possible.
“I’m not giving up, working as hard as I can to make it happen!” Vonn wrote in a caption with the video. “Thank you to my team and everyone for your incredible support. Keep believing.”
Vonn still has to complete a training run to qualify for the starting field in Sunday’s downhill event. Weather has created an obstacle with heavy snow canceling Thursday’s exercise. But opportunities could still be available Friday and Saturday, weather permitting.
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Finland women’s ice hockey postpones opener due to norovirus outbreak
Elsewhere in women’s ice hockey group play, Finland and Canada had their opening match postponed due to a norovirus outbreak among the Finnish team. After four sick players forced the team to cancel its Wednesday training session, 14 members of the team were ill on Thursday. Possible exposure to the virus warranted several players being placed into quarantine.
With only 10 available players for Finland and a risk of passing the virus to Canada’s team, the International Ice Hockey Federation and the International Olympic Committee decided to postpone the game with Canada until Feb. 12.
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As mentioned above, Finland is scheduled to play the U.S. on Saturday, but it’s not yet known whether enough Finnish players will be out of quarantine for the team to play.
Team USA medals
Highlight of the day
U.S. snowboarders Red Gerard and Jake Canter looked ready to compete for medals in the Big Air event, each landing backside 1800 jumps during qualifying rounds on Thursday. A backside 1800 involves five full 360-degree horizontal rotations, spinning in a backside direction.
One more thing
Leading up to Friday’s Opening Ceremony, the Olympic torch is making its way through Milan. Three-time snowboarding gold medalist Shaun White was among the athletes to carry the torch on Thursday.
White will next travel to Livigno to watch the snowboarding competition, which begins Saturday with the men’s Big Air final.
The Opening Ceremony hasn’t happened yet, but the 2026 Winter Olympics curling competition is already under way. This Friday, Team USA will compete in not one but two mixed doubles matches, including a highly anticipated matchup against our neighbors to the north, Canada. Team USA vs. Canada will stream live at 4 a.m. ET (and you’ll also be able to catch Team USA vs. Czechia at 8:35 a.m.), with all the action happening live on Peacock.
Here’s a complete schedule of all Team USA Curling events at this year’s games, along with a rundown of who is competing. And if you want to learn even more about every event at this year’s Winter Games, here’s a guide to everything you need to know about the Milan Cortina Games.
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How to watch the Team USA vs. Canada Curling match at the 2026 Winter Olympics
For $17 monthly you can upgrade to an ad-free subscription which includes live access to your local NBC affiliate (not just during designated sports and events) and the ability to download select titles to watch offline.
Where to watch Curling on TV:
The Team USA vs. Canada curling match will stream exclusively on Peacock on Friday and will not be broadcast on TV. Typically, most Team USA curling coverage will be split between CNBC and USA, and the women’s final on Feb. 22 will also air on NBC. (To see specific air times, check out the official NBC Olympics broadcast schedule, and toggle your search to “TV Only.”) You can stream all of these channels on DirecTV, Hulu + Live TV and more.
For $17 monthly you can upgrade to an ad-free subscription which includes live access to your local NBC affiliate (not just during designated sports and events) and the ability to download select titles to watch offline.
Who is on the Team USA Curling team?
These are the athletes on Team USA’s curling team:
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2026 Team USA Olympic Curling Schedule:
Thursday, February 5
Norway vs. USA (Mixed Doubles Round Robin): 4:05 a.m. (Peacock), re-air at 5 p.m. (CNBC)
Switzerland vs. USA (Mixed Doubles Round Robin): 8:35 a.m. (USA, Peacock), re-air at 6:30 p.m. (CNBC)
Best of Curling: 5 p.m. (CNBC)
Friday, February 6
USA vs. Canada (Mixed Doubles Round Robin): 4:05 a.m. (Peacock)
Czechia vs. USA (Mixed Doubles Round Robin): 8:35 a.m. (Peacock, USA)
Saturday, February 7
Great Britain vs. USA (Mixed Doubles Round Robin): 8:35 a.m. (Peacock), re-air at 9:30 a.m. (USA)
South Korea vs. USA: 1:05 p.m. (Peacock), re-air at 7 p.m. (CNBC)
Nate Tice, Matt Harmon & Charles McDonald are LIVE from San Francisco to give their final thoughts and predictions for Super LX as they find the strengths and weaknesses of the Seattle Seahawks and New England Patriots.
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The trio kick things off with the latest non-Super Bowl news from around the NFL, including Jay Glazer hinting at a potential Maxx Crosby departure on Yahoo Sports Daily and Philadelphia Eagles offensive line guru Jeff Stoutland departing, leaving Philly with major shoes to fill.
Next, the three hosts dive into the Super LX matchup, previewing each side of the ball’s top matchups to watch, key injuries, predictions for the game and more.
Later, Prime Vision’s Sam Schwartzstein joins the group to give his analytical insights on the game before Nate, Matt, Charles and Sam give their final Hail Mary bold predictions for the game.
The show wraps up with conversations with Josh Allen, Jayden Daniels & Bijan Robinson.
Grizzlies get: Eric Gordon, 2032 second-round pick swap
76ers get: 2032 second-round pick swap
Celtics trading Josh Minott to Nets (Feb. 5)
Nets get: Josh Minott
Celtics get: Salary/tax savings
Nuggets trade Hunter Tyson to Nets (Feb. 5)
Nuggets get: 2026 second-round pick (least favorable of Clippers or Hawks)
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Nets get: Hunter Tyson, 2032 second-round pick
Knicks gets: Jose Alvarado
Pelicans get: Dalen Terry, two second-round picks and cash
Suns get: Cole Anthony and Amir Coffey
Bucks get: Ousmane Dieng and Nigel Hayes-Davis
Bulls get: Nick Richards
Jazz get: Chris Boucher and Denver’s 2027 second-round pick
Celtics get: John Tonje, salary/tax savings
Lakers get: Luke Kennard
Hawks get: Gabe Vincent and a 2032 second-round pick
Bulls get: Rob Dillingham, Leonard Miller, 2026 second-round pick (least favorable of Nuggets or Warriors); Cavaliers 2027 second-round pick; 2031 second-round pick (most favorable of Timberwolves or Warriors); 2032 second-round pick (most favorable of Suns or Rockets)
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Timberwolves get: Ayo Dosunmu and Julian Phillips
Knicks trade Guerschon Yabusele to Bulls (Feb. 4)
Knicks get: Dalen Terry
Bulls get: Guerschon Yabusele
Warriors trade Trayce Jackson-Davis to Raptors (Feb. 4)
Here’s a snapshot of the top players and, below that, a full breakdown of the 30-man roster, which was announced Thursday:
Team USA roster for the 2026 World Baseball Classic
Team USA position players
C Cal Raleigh, Seattle Mariners
C Will Smith, Los Angeles Dodgers
1B Bryce Harper, Philadelphia Phillies
1B Paul Goldschmidt, free agent
2B Brice Turang, Milwaukee Brewers
3B Gunnar Henderson, Baltimore Orioles
3B Alex Bregman, Chicago Cubs
SS Bobby Witt Jr., Kansas City Royals
INF Ernie Clement, Toronto Blue Jays
OF Aaron Judge, New York Yankees
OF Corbin Carroll, Arizona Diamondbacks
OF Pete Crow-Armstrong, Chicago Cubs
OF Byron Buxton, Minnesota Twins
DH Kyle Schwarber, Philadelphia Phillies
Team USA pitchers
SP Clayton Kershaw, retired from MLB
SP Tarik Skubal, Detroit Tigers
SP Paul Skenes, Pittsburgh Pirates
SP Joe Ryan, Minnesota Twins
SP Logan Webb, San Francisco Giants
SP Nolan McLean, New York Mets
SP Clay Holmes, New York Mets
SP Matthew Boyd, Chicago Cubs
SP Michael Wacha, Kansas City Royals
RP Mason Miller, San Diego Padres
RP Griffin Jax, Tampa Bay Rays
RP Garrett Whitlock, Boston Red Sox
RP Garrett Cleavinger, Tampa Bay Rays
RP David Bednar, New York Yankees
RP Gabe Speier, Seattle Mariners
RP Brad Keller, Philadelphia Phillies
The 2026 World Baseball Classic will begin March 5 and run through March 17. Team USA will be looking for redemption after falling to Shohei Ohtani and Team Japan in the final in 2023.
The San Diego Padres are reportedly moving closer to the franchise going up for sale, with opening bids for the team expected to be submitted by the end of February, according to The Athletic.
One of the people presumably interested in bidding is Golden State Warriors team owner Joe Lacob, The Athletic’s Dennis Lin and Mike Vorkunov reported. While Lacob has looked into the possibility of buying the Padres, he has not committed to making a bid, at least publicly. However, he has previously made attempts to buy the Athletics, Los Angeles Angels and Los Angeles Dodgers.
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Lacob, 70, has owned the Warriors since 2010, overseeing a franchise that has won four NBA championships and has become the most valuable team in the league, according to CNBC and Forbes. His sports team portfolio also includes the WNBA expansion Golden State Valkyries.
The San Diego Padres could begin taking bids from potential buyers by the end of February, according to reports. (Photo by Justin K. Aller/Getty Images)
(Justin K. Aller via Getty Images)
Others who have reportedly shown interest in purchasing the Padres include Dan Friedkin and José E. Feliciano, according to Sportico. Friedkin’s Pursuit Sports group currently owns Premier League club Everton and AS Roma in Serie A. He also pursued buying the Boston Celtics before that franchise was sold to Bill Chisholm and Symphony Technology Group last spring. Feliciano and his private equity firm, Clearlake Capital, own Chelsea in the Premier League.
The path to a sale of the Padres was cleared earlier this week, when Sheel Seidler, the widow of late team owner Peter Seidler, settled her lawsuit against her brothers-in-law, Bob and Matt Seidler. The lawsuit, filed in January 2025, alleged that the brothers committed “breaches of fiduciary duty and fraud” as trustees of the Seidler Trust that controls the franchise.
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Peter Seidler died in November 2023 at the age of 63 after a months-long illness. He became the Padres’ chairman and largest stakeholder after being part of the group that purchased the franchise in 2012.
John Seidler currently controls the family trust, and thus the Padres, after being approved by MLB owners a year ago. He was not named in Sheel Seidler’s lawsuit.
The lawsuit also accused the Seidler brothers of exploring a relocation of the team. Despite being based in the Bay Area, Lacob reportedly would not consider moving the Padres out of Southern California.
LIVIGNO, Italy — On Jan. 9, freestyle skier Eileen Gu posted on Instagram a “Day in my Life” video commemorating the one-month countdown to the Milan Cortina Olympics.
Glimpses of Gu brushing her teeth, eating breakfast, riding a ski lift, practicing tricks on a giant airbag, cooling down with a 5 kilometer run, talking to the media, completing a doping test, and reading a book while she’s in a hyperbaric chamber were all stuffed into a 29-second Instagram reel.
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Within 10 days, it generated more than a million views.
So it’s probably no coincidence that Gu, the American-born dual gold medal winner who chose to compete for China in 2019, was the fourth highest-paid female athlete of 2025. According to Sportico, all but $20,000 of her $23 million came from endorsements.
While sponsorships have always been crucial to the earning potential of Olympic athletes, who generally aren’t raking in huge sums of prize money, financial success no longer hinges on whose image lands on the Wheaties box.
Now most of it happens on social media, where the line between Olympic athletes and influencers has been blurred — usually to the benefit of their pocketbooks as this Winter Games draws close.
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“The number of Olympians who have become more popular and made money in the Olympics has grown exponentially,” said Doug Shabelman, the CEO of Chicago-based Burns Entertainment, a firm that matches celebrities and athletes with marketing opportunities. “Now everybody, whether you win or lose, can be an influencer. Before you had to win gold medals, you had to do something special. Now social media has leveled the playing field, and the marketability of these athletes is 365 days a year.”
(Amy Monks/Yahoo Sports illustration)
Gu is among the handful of Olympic athletes at the top of that food chain along with the likes of Simone Biles and Lindsey Vonn. It’s no surprise given Gu’s success in the sport and her endorsement potential in China, which likely played at least some role in her choice to represent her mother’s homeland rather than the more crowded American market.
But you don’t need to be the most successful winter sports athlete in a country of 1.4 billion people to leverage social media for endorsement dollars.
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Take freestyle skier Alex Ferreira. Once a year, he puts on a prosthetic mask, a gray wig and fake facial hair to make him look like a skiing has-been, goes to the slopes with a film crew, talks trash to younger skiers and shocks crowds as he executes Olympic-level tricks.
The character, “Hot Dog Hans,” was inspired by Kyrie Irving’s portrayal of streetball legend “Uncle Drew.” Though it started out as a one-time gag a few years ago, Ferreira realized within 15 minutes of his first day in costume that it was something he could draw out into a multi-episode series of short films.
The full Hans skits now generate hundreds of thousands of views on YouTube, with the clips drawing millions on Instagram. And while it may have started as a fun distraction, it has become a high-profile example of how an Olympic athlete who is not particularly famous in the mainstream world can find a niche that leads to dollars.
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“We’re in this day and age where your main job is to compete, learn new tricks, go to these contests and win them,” Ferreira said. “But the other half of the business is gaining sponsors, so you need to create content as well. I’m a professional skier, but I’m also an influencer in a way. Basically, when you think the job is over, you have to get back and get on the computer and start cranking out content. When I started, it was much less than that.”
Though the content game does require more time outside of traditional training and media obligations, it keeps many athletes in the mix during those four-year gaps between Olympics when they don’t get as much mainstream attention. And then, once an Olympics begins, you never really know what’s going to hit.
One of the biggest social media stars of the Paris Games was Henrik Christiansen, a Norwegian swimmer who did not finish better than 20th in any of his three events but went viral for videos about chocolate chip muffins in the athletes’ village. The “Muffin Man” now has more than 500,000 followers on TikTok and is still trading off the joke. One of his most popular recent videos from last October shows him whisking cocoa powder into a mixing bowl trying to replicate a recipe he’s watching on television.
“I’m 56, and our generation, we still look at it like, ‘We want to see the winners and the great stories,’” Shabelman said. “But a different generation has different things they’re more interested in, and there are so many different avenues now, so many different ways to get your story and your personality out that it changed the game in a big way on the marketing side.
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“It’s not just the winners anymore. Engagement on social media with fans is so important to marketers because they don’t just want to see how many people look at videos. They want to see who’s engaging, who has that accessibility and who has something that other people don’t.”
It also helps that Olympic sports, particularly in the winter, have great visuals that lend themselves to social media. Whether it’s a striking costume being worn by a figure skater, a gravity-defying trick on a snowboard or simply the backdrop of a snow-capped mountain, Winter Olympians don’t necessarily have to stretch far outside their comfort zone to create eye-catching content.
Many of Gu’s posts, for instance, have nothing to do with sports and fall more into the category of modeling or a peek into the lifestyle of a rich, young woman who travels the world like a true celebrity and hangs out with other celebrities. They are slickly produced and undeniably targeted to demographics that are not watching the Freestyle Ski World Cup.
“We are still a society that does value attractiveness and different elements that we all have come to know about people who are endorsers,” Shabelman said. “But then you also add on being really good at building great content, you have a lot of (famous) friends you might tag in a post and that might get you even more followers.”
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Though not every Olympic athlete handles their social media as seriously or professionally as Gu, it’s now just a fact of life that maximizing endorsement potential — which is what keeps many of these Olympians going in sports that don’t offer big prize money — often runs through Instagram or TikTok.
“Content creation is what’s happening right now,” snowboarder Jamie Anderson said. “It’s bigger than almost anything. There are YouTubers making more money than NFL players. So it really doesn’t matter what I think about it, it’s happening. You kind of have to move with the waves. It’s definitely the future of marketing and sports. Times have changed quick.”
Including playoffs, Clase appeared in 178 games ranging from May 2023 to June 2025, the timeline of the scheme alleged by prosecutors. If the 48-game figure is correct, that would mean Clase threw suspicious pitches (i.e. intentional balls to allegedly help his co-conspirators win prop bets) in 27% of his appearances with the Guardians in that span.
That figure reportedly comes from Clase’s co-defendant, Guardians teammate Luis Ortiz, who is accused of manipulating only two pitches in June 2025. It was Ortiz who was first implicated in the scandal, but his attorneys are now reportedly requesting that his case be severed from Clase’s due to “markedly different levels of culpability.”
Basically, Ortiz’s camp is arguing that the case against Clase is so overwhelming, it hurts Ortiz’s case to be at the same defendant’s table. From ESPN:
In Thursday’s filing, Ortiz’s attorney pointed to this difference in scale and emphasized that the indictment did not contain evidence of Ortiz communicating directly with bettors.
Georgalis argued that a jury presented “with 26 months of alleged criminal conduct by Mr. Clase — including suspect pitches during 48 games, dozens of communications with [a bettor], cash transfers and coordination of illegal wagers” could find Ortiz guilty by association.
Another court record reportedly shows that a judge asked prosecutors to provide Clase’s attorneys with evidence for suspicious pitches:
“[Clase] has identified at least 250 pitches on which bets were placed, so the Court encouraged the government to disclose discovery to [Clase] as to any additional pitches that it alleges were included in the conspiracy,” a record of the court proceeding states.
The pitchers officially remain members of the Guardians organization, but they remain on the restricted list (i.e. unpaid leave). In addition to prison time, they face a lifetime ban from baseball, pending MLB’s investigation into the allegations.
Clase is alleged to have done all this despite his status as one of the top closers in baseball and a contract that would have paid him $6.4 million in 2026, with a pair of team options for $10 million each in 2027 and 2028.
“America’s Team” is going international for the first time in 12 years.
The Dallas Cowboys will be one of the participating teams in the NFL’s first game in Rio de Janeiro next season.
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The date and time of the game, as well as the Cowboys’ opponent, will be announced at a later date, per a league release on Thursday night. It will be played in the Maracanã Stadium, which famously hosted the 2014 FIFA World Cup final.
The NFL has already played two games in Brazil, but those took place in São Paulo at Corinthians Arena, where the Philadelphia Eagles defeated the Green Bay Packers on Sept. 6, 2024, and the Los Angeles Chargers bested the Kansas City Chiefs on Sept. 5, 2025. Both were season openers, and both were decided by one score.
The Cowboys’ game in Rio will be their first international date since 2014, when they faced off against the Jacksonville Jaguars in London.
It will also mark the franchise’s 11th time playing an international game, however, nine of those matchups have arrived during the preseason, according to the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, which listed those 10 prior games as such:
2014 vs. Jacksonville Jaguars | London
2001 vs. Oakland Raiders | Mexico City (preseason)
2000 vs. Atlanta Falcons | Tokyo (preseason)
1998 vs. New England Patriots | Mexico City (preseason)
1996 vs. Kansas City Chiefs | Monterrey (preseason)
MILAN — Adrian Livelten hunched over a sewing machine last March on the eve of the men’s ski jumping competition at the Nordic World Ski Championships.
The suit technician for Norway’s national ski jumping team brazenly made alterations to suits belonging to the country’s two top contenders after those suits had already passed inspection. Livelten did this in plain view of Norway ski jumping head coach Magnus Brevik, seated in a chair halfway across the room.
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What neither Livelten nor Brevik realized at the time was that someone was recording them in secrecy from behind a curtain, someone who intended to distribute the video far and wide the following day. The damning footage shared by the anonymous whistleblower shook the sport of ski jumping, bringing out into the open the cheating that happened behind closed doors.
When officials from the International Ski and Snowboard Federation (FIS) seized suits belonging to reigning Olympic champion Marius Lindvik and fellow Norwegian Johann André Forfang, they found rules violations that initially went unnoticed during the competition. Stiffer, non-elastic thread had been sewn into the suits to pull down the crotch area during flight, increasing the surface area and creating more aerodynamic lift in a sport where inches can be the difference between medaling and missing the podium.
Norway’s Johann Andre Forfang competes at the World Championships in January. (Karl-Josef Hildenbrand/Getty Images)
(picture alliance via Getty Images)
“Probably the most shocking part was that it was Norway because they’ve always been considered one of the more standup teams,” said Johnny Spillane, the first American to medal in the sport of Nordic combined, which consists of ski jumping and cross-country skiing. “Everyone is going to push the limits. That hasn’t changed and that probably will never change, but this was deliberately altering a suit after it had been tested in order to cheat. This was the most blatant cheating I’ve heard of.”
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The Norway cheating scandal highlighted two irrefutable facts about the crotch-obsessed sport of ski jumping on the precipice of the 2026 Winter Olympics. There is, as Finnish coach Petter Kukkonen put it last April, “a culture of cheating” in ski jumping. And the battleground between unscrupulous teams and rule-upholding regulators is often below the belt.
Male ski jumpers must wear tight-fitting suits that are no more than 4 centimeters larger than their body measurements at any point. Most national teams seek to find every millimeter they can because a bigger, baggier suit catches more wind and provides more lift during flight than a smaller one does.
Athletes chasing that competitive advantage have resorted to trickery when having their body dimensions measured prior to a competition. The more they reduce the distance between their inseam and the floor when FIS equipment controllers record their body measurements, the lower regulators will allow the crotch of their suit to hang while airborne.
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In November 2020, Kukkonen told Finland’s leading tabloid newspaper that athletes were stuffing dish cloths and sponges in their underwear during body measuring. In a recent appearance on the Skirious Problems podcast, Austria’s Mika Vermeulen revealed that when he competed in nordic combined earlier in his career, veterans told him before his first body measuring, “It’s very important to tape your c*** back.”
Vermeulen later described ski jumpers putting modeling clay in their underwear to lower their crotch-to-floor measurement by five centimeters.
“People used to cheat a f*** ton,” Vermeulen said.
Salacious stories like those were already pushing ski jumping out of the margins and into the mainstream entering these Olympics. Then the German tabloid Bild sparked further curiosity in January when it reported that ski jumpers have worn condom-like sleeves filled with hyaluronic acid to enlarge themselves before measurement.
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On Thursday, the eve of the Opening Ceremony of the 2026 Olympics, reporters asked World Anti-Doping Agency director general Olivier Niggli about that report. Niggli said that “If anything was to come to the surface, we would look at it and see if it is doping related.”
“When I read that article, all I could do was shake my head,” USA Ski Jumping and Nordic Combined sport director Anders Johnson said. “If that is really what other people were doing previously, I can’t believe that that’s how far people have taken it.”
After Austria’s Toni Innauer won gold at the 1976 Olympics, the “Austrian effect” was born. (RDB/Getty Images)
(ullstein bild Dtl. via Getty Images)
‘You name it, people have tried it’
Cheating in ski jumping isn’t a new phenomenon. Athletes have been pushing boundaries and exploiting loopholes ever since the sport’s governing body began setting rules restricting how far they can fly.
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In the mid-1970s, the Austrian national team unveiled suits that were highly permeable in the front but did not allow air to pass through in the back. The resulting parachute effect helped Austrian jumpers take gold and silver in the men’s large-hill event at the 1976 Winter Olympics. 17-year-old Austrian prodigy Toni Innauer set a world record the following month and then bettered it two days later.
The success of those suits inspired copycat attempts, some well-executed, others not so much. Former American ski jumper Jeff Hastings recalls an early 1980s competitor who “put a garbage bag in the back of his suit to try to get the ‘76 Austrian effect.”
“Everybody could hear him up there rustling like crazy,” Hastings said. “It wasn’t even effective but he was just trying to get a little advantage.”
Detailed rules governing the air permeability of ski jumping suits soon went into effect, but that didn’t deter athletes eager to find even the slightest competitive advantage. Retired ski jumpers have admitted to coating the back of their suits with hairspray or slathering on wood glue in an effort to reduce air flow, improve lift and fly longer.
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“You name it, people have tried it,” Spillane said.
As the sport’s deep-pocketed superpowers stopped buying suits from third-party manufacturers and started hiring sophisticated specialists to produce them in-house, new opportunities to cheat have materialized over the past 10-15 years. Teams sought to gain an advantage by creating custom suits for athletes that exceeded their body measurement by as much as possible without resulting in a disqualification.
The ideal place to add material is where the legs converge, according to Dr. John Goff, visiting physics professor at the University of Puget Sound and author of the book “Gold Medal Physics.” The crotch area of the suit is naturally stretched wide with a jumper’s legs in a “V” position during flight. It’s also close to the body’s center of gravity, helping an athlete gain lift without sacrificing control.
“The crotch region, where the legs part, is kind of a sharp transition point,” Goff said. “If you can put some kind of material there to smooth that out, you can reduce the turbulence and increase the lift for the skier. That can have a pretty big influence on the flight.”
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For FIS regulators seeking to prevent teams from gaining an advantage, the process starts with athletes stripping down to their underwear. Athletes must have their body dimensions measured before competitions in the presence of an FIS equipment controller, a team official and a qualified doctor or nurse.
Since 2023, those measurements have sometimes been taken with the help of a 3D body scanner. Before then, it was always a manual process. As American Nordic Combined skier and 2018 Olympian Ben Berend once detailed in a blog post, that made the crotch measurement part of this process particularly awkward.
“The process consists of standing with your feet 40 cm apart wearing nothing but underwear,” Berend wrote in 2016. “Then a metal rod is moved up as high as possible until it hits your junk. The measurement is essentially junk to floor in centimeters.”
The intrusiveness doesn’t end once the measuring process is over. Athletes also must endure what FIS described in a 2023 memo as a “visual crotch area inspection.” A supervising doctor or nurse checks the athlete “for any irregularities in the genital area” — in other words an artificial prosthesis in the athlete’s underwear that could reduce the crotch-to-floor measurement.
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As a result of stories like the ones shared by Kukkonen and Vermeulen, the process is fraught with suspicion that national teams are finding ways to bypass the rules.
A friend recently sent Hastings a screenshot of one of the world’s top-ranked ski jumpers in mid-flight last year.
“The crotch on his suit practically came down to his knees,” Hastings said. “I’m exaggerating a little bit, but it looked like he had a diaper on.”
Between suspicious images like that one, unconfirmed gossip about which teams were cheating and the knowledge of how much difference a little extra fabric can make, Johnson admits it creates a toxic culture.
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“If one team starts cheating, then two or three start doing it,” Johnson said. “Once you have the best nations in the world doing it, then everyone kind of has to follow suit. It just spreads like wildfire and then once it does, it’s really hard to get back.”
Marius Lindvik of Norway competes during the FIS Men’s Ski Jumping Sapporo Men’s Individual Large Hill at Okurayama Jump Stadium on January 17, 2026. (Photo by Kenta Harada/Getty Images)
(Kenta Harada via Getty Images)
‘Doping, just with a different needle’
The chicanery mostly occurred in secret until the anonymous whistleblower shined a spotlight on Norway’s dishonesty and turned the birthplace of ski jumping into a symbol for everything wrong with the sport. Austria, Slovenia and Poland filed formal protests against the Norwegians during the World Championships and called for their results to be annulled.
Lindvik and Forgang claimed ignorance, insisting they never would have jumped had they known their suits were rigged. When their coaches backed them, the Norwegian ski jumpers received suspensions of just three months, enabling them to return in time for the 2025-26 World Cup season and the Olympics, where the men’s competition begins Monday.
The penalty was harsher for Livelten, Brevik and Norway assistant coach Thomas Lobben, each of whom confessed to being part of the conspiracy. On Jan. 15, an independent ethics panel backed the FIS’s request for a punishment strong enough to serve as a deterrent against future cheating, suspending the trio for 18 months apiece.
“In [the panel’s] view, now is indeed the appropriate time to put down a clear marker to what is not acceptable,” the panel’s scathing ruling read.
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For many in American ski jumping circles, the Norway cheating scandal entangled close friends. In 2022, USA Ski Jumping signed a formal partnership with the Norwegian national team for the current Olympic cycle to hold joint training camps and coaching clinics and to collaborate on sports science.
While Johnson doesn’t condone what Norway did, he also bristles at how the Norwegians have become “the scapegoat for a much broader issue within our sport.”
“There has been a lot of hypocrisy from other nations,” Johnson said. “I don’t have any personal beef with any of these teams, but it was incredibly disappointing for me to see the response from some of the nations. I think everyone needs to take a look at themselves in the mirror. No one can say they were fully clean. They can only claim they are because they didn’t get caught.”
Embarrassed by the Norway scandal, FIS has since hired new equipment control coordinators and introduced sweeping reforms for the 2025-26 season. The changes include increased use of 3D scanners for pre-event body measurements, more precisely defined rules for how suits can be cut and shaped and more training for equipment controllers who oversee pre- and post-jump inspections.
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Harsher sanctions can now be issued for rules violations during 3D measurement or for the manipulation of a suit after it has passed inspection. Athletes disqualified for an equipment violation during a competition will receive a yellow card. A further transgression will result in a red card and suspension from the following event.
To Johnson and many others in the ski jumping community, the most notable change is one that has gone unmentioned in any FIS press release.
In the past, Johnson found that “it was much easier for FIS to discard or disqualify athletes from smaller nations because they didn’t have that political pull in the sport.” This year, highly ranked jumpers from prominent nations have been cited for equipment violations, athletes like Slovenia’s Timi Zajc, who was tied for second place at an event in Germany earlier this winter when he was disqualified for suit violation.
“This year, it doesn’t seem to matter if you’re from Austria or Slovenia or Poland or the United States,” Johnson said. “They’re enforcing the rules for everyone.”
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As the world’s top ski jumpers prepare to showcase their talents on the Olympic stage this month, the obvious question is whether the competition will be fair. Will the threat of stricter rules and tougher punishments be enough to deter cheaters? Or will the pursuit of Olympic glory tempt some countries to try to skirt the rules?
“Going into this Olympics, I have a lot more faith and trust in the system,” Johnson said, “but I still have my reservations that teams are really going to be in compliance, that they’re not going to be trying something new.”
