Suit Yourself: How Much Does The Suit Matter?
A Norwegian ski jumping team was disqualified for modifying their suits -- does it work?
In the first event of the 2025-26 ski jumping season, a team of Norwegian athletes were found to be using illegally altered suits. Specifically, the suits contained pieces of reinforced thread that increased the suit’s surface area. In total, six male ski jumpers were disqualified, with three more being “not permitted to start.”
But why would a suit be so impactful that an altered one could warrant a disqualification? In ski jumping, aerodynamic efficiency is of the utmost importance. Essentially, athletes want to minimize drag in the downhill acceleration phase to achieve high speed and maximize lift in the airborne phase of the jump. The suit that a ski jumper is wearing is vital to both of these sequences, so a suit that did not meet regulations in some way presumably provides a massive – and unfair – advantage to the athlete. But, how much of advantage can a ski jump suit truly make?
A 2025 study published in the journal Nature looked into the first phase of the ski jump where the main focus was on skier acceleration. The researchers called this the ‘in-run’ phase. They tested whether the roughness of the fabric in a suit affected the speed achieved during the in-run phase. The study found that certain levels of roughness were better for certain aspects of acceleration than others. Indeed, drag was found to be minimized at 17.036 micrometers of roughness, and stability at 28.206 micrometers. While this is not the same aspect of the suit that was modified by the Norwegians, this evidence does support the idea that there is a competitive advantage to be gained by manipulating even the smallest parts of a suit.
Flight time is also affected by the design of the suits. For example, another 2025 study published in the Journal of Applied Fluid Mechanics found that drag and lift were very closely linked to fabric roughness and air permeability, respectively. This study showed that drag was minimized at around 17 micrometers of roughness (just as the first study found), and that low air-permeable fabrics – meaning fabrics that allow very little air to pass through them – were best for generating lift, which extends flight time and ultimately distance the key outcome that determines the difference of being on the medal stand or not.
Considering the evidence that shows suits provide key benefits to acceleration and lift, it seems fair the Norwegian team was penalized for the modifications to their suits – whether they were intentional or not. After all, both studies described above indicate that even microscopic changes to a ski jumper's suit can be very influential on the performance of the athlete.
