How Norway's ski jumping scandal led to new rules in place for the Winter Olympics

The difference between winning an Olympic medal in ski jumping or being disqualified could come down to a bit of fabric.

A larger suit can extend a ski jumper's flight by several meters but it could violate rules that have become more stringent after the Norwegian team was caught cheating at last year's world championships by manipulating the crotch area in the uniforms of its top two male jumpers.

Regulators added new measures this season before the Milan Cortina Winter Games to ensure all competitors play by the same rules after the scandal rocked the sport in March.

"There have been disqualifications in the past, many. It's part of the sport," said Bruno Sassi, spokesman for the international ski federation, FIS, the sport's regulatory body. "But there had never been that kind of a brazen attempt to not only bend the rules, but like downright do something ... to cheat the system in a way that it is very different from simply having a suit that is a tad too long or a tad too loose."

Ski jumping is as much a science as an art. Teams of experts test skis and clothing in wind tunnels to maximize the aerodynamics at play long before jumpers try to achieve the perfect takeoff, flying form and landing.

A study published in October in the journal Frontiers in Sports and Active Living showed that adding 1 cm of fabric to the circumference of the suit could increase a jump by 2.8 metres — enough to separate a winner from an also-ran.

"In most cases, enlargement of the suit is beneficial," said co-author Sören Muller, who heads ski jumping research at the Institute for Applied Training Science in Leipzig, Germany. "However, the area stretched by the V-position of the legs in the crotch area is the most noticeable and also