Olympic champion ski jumpers suspended as cheating scandal rocks sport

Sign stealing in baseball. Match fixing in soccer. Doping allegations in swimming. Now ski jumping has its own scandal that escalated Wednesday.

Cheating by Norway team officials manipulating ski suits has shaken a national reputation for fair play and high-minded principles at their home Nordic world championships, where the host team dominated the medal table.

Two Olympic gold medallists, Marius Lindvik and Johann Andre Forfang, had denied involvement since the allegations emerged at the weekend but were suspended Wednesday and put under formal suspicion in an investigation overseen by the International Ski and Snowboard Federation (FIS). They now cannot compete in a World Cup event in Oslo that starts Thursday.

Lindvik and Forfang already had been disqualified from the large hill event in Trondheim held Saturday, days after Lindvik soared to become world champion on the normal hill.

Though both athletes were backed by the Norwegian team insisting they knew nothing about deliberately altered ski suits, their head coach Magnus Brevig and equipment manager Adrian Livelten confessed and were stood down from their jobs.

"FIS has provisionally suspended three Norwegian team officials and two athletes who are being investigated for their alleged involvement in illegal equipment manipulation," the Switzerland-based governing body said in a statement.

An assistant coach, Thomas Lobben, also is part of an investigation in which FIS-appointed investigators have seized all the home Norway team's suits used at the worlds.

What has emerged involves team officials manipulating pre-approved and microchipped suits to increase their size and improve aerodynamics to help athletes fly further.

It was revealed in footage secretly filmed