(Beijing) Disqualified like four other competitors for a non-compliant combination during the mixed team ski jumping event, the German Katharina Althaus, Olympic vice-champion in the individual, accused the International Ski Federation on Monday ( FIS) to “destroy women’s ski jumping”.
Posted at 11:50 a.m.
“We were so happy to have a second event here at the Olympics” for women, Althaus said, quoted by the German sports agency SID: “The FIS destroyed everything with this operation. I think they destroyed women’s ski jumping. I don’t know what they are trying to do”.
“This is how we screw up nations, elk, and make sport unfair,” continued the 25-year-old German, one of five disqualified, with two Norwegians, an Austrian and the Japanese champion Sara Takanashi, for combinations that did not respect the rules.
“I have been checked so many times in eleven years of ski jumping, and I have never been disqualified once, I know my suit was compliant,” she added, after bursting into tears in learning of his disqualification.
Horst Hüttel, one of the leaders of the German Ski Federation, defended the skiers: “These four great nations are not ‘dumb’ enough to want to circumvent the rules. I don’t think athletes are dumb enough to cheat at the Olympics either,” he said.
No competitor was disqualified in the individual event, and no men were disqualified Monday in the mixed event.