Not least because of the end of the season, calm has come around the suit scandal in ski jumping. While the investigation continues, Robin Pedersen spoke up with one of the five previously suspended Norwegians – and raised serious accusations against the FIS ski association.
The current calm in the ski jumping circus is, qua spring break, calendar normality. In 2025 it is also deceptive, after all, after the suit scandal at the World Cup in Trondheim, there is an ongoing procedure. This is exactly what Robin Pedersen has now expressed one of the former five suspended Norwegian athletes.
In his view, the 28-year-old describes the events at the home World Cup and the subsequent World Cup in Oslo to the newspaper “Ranablad”-and raises several serious accusations against the FIS ski association.
At first he emphasized that he was not aware of any guilt: “I sewed my suits myself, so I know that everything is fine with them.”
The fact that the investigation has not resulted in any results to this day right: “It took five minutes to find mistakes in the suits of Marius (Lindvik, editor’s note) and Johann (André Forfang, editor’s note) in Trondheim, but a month to find something in the spring. said they had found something in our suits. “
Pedersen, as well as his teammates and the Norwegian ski association, had been looking for legal assistance and received clear statements about the evidence from their lawyers: “What they accuse us of is not valid. All independent lawyers have found that they have nothing against us.”
Ski jumper shoots against FIS: “Situation very badly handled”
The World Association made even more coarser mistakes, according to the ski jumper: “The way the FIS was handled with this case was horrific, they handled this situation very badly. The communication was completely lacking, they did not stand up for their own logs, it was impossible for us to persecute anything. In my case, there are errors in the files, and it means that they are charged because of anything because of anything have to, but they didn’t do that either. “
In addition, he and his compatriots had been assured that they were allowed to travel to the FIS office in Oberhofen to Switzerland as part of the examination, but they have been refused to this day. The Wahl-Trondheimer also expressed great lack of understanding: “It is my jumping suit, why shouldn’t I be there? We were allowed to send five athletes a representative, the association two, and the FIS had eleven people there. Our suits were measured according to all the rules of art, but we were not allowed to be there.”
According to Pedersen, this procedure symbolizes the arbitrariness of the FIS, which is exposed to as a athlete. “You have the whole power. You control, who can jump, you check the equipment, you control the product. If there is anything that runs your wishes, just make what you want. So it is very difficult to be only a game ball in this game.
This is exactly why he, Kristoffer Eriksen Sundal and Robert Johansson were excluded during the ongoing training sessions at the start of the RAW-Air tour in Oslo, he speculates: “There are rumors that the German press has threatened to boycott RAW Air if not all Norwegians are removed from the World Cup. Athletes are easy to acidify when it comes to millions of television rights. “
Pedersen: “Have not been informed”
He also felt this situation and communication on the part of the FIS as “completely absurd” and reported: “We had graduated from the Holmenkollen and, after jumping on the way to the changing room, when Robert received an email, we said that he was suspended and could no longer jump. I hadn’t even received an email. D.
It was never spoken personally to him and his teammates, so their only sources of information were the relevant media. Only from articles would they have learned that the suits are in Switzerland. “The General Secretary of the FIS went to the media and said they found something in the suits. We were not informed about it,” he complained.
Instead, the FIS press conference was pursued and only received a letter that indicates that “something strange” had happened, because: “At this press conference, things were said in direct contradiction to what is in the letters. Our letter also contains a number of mistakes, so that it looks like it was just sent out.”
Pedersen expressed that he and his compatriots were clear that “our lock would be lifted as soon as the World Cup was over”, which finally happened. The FIS did not want to solve the real problem, he criticized.
This has already been shown in the inspection of the suits before the said jump on the wooden cums, which had expired very dubious. “No Norwegian tailors were allowed to be present, so a lawyer of the Norwegian ski association, who had never seen a jump suit or read the regulations, was confronted with the wrong rules. That was a one -way street. We were basically damn it before we had made the suit,” he said.
In the course of the conversation, he not only described this moment as well as the entire situation with the word “hopeless”. Disqualifications in ski jumping could happen, especially because you need a lot of experience as a athlete to be able to survive the controls, but in this case the matter was “overturned”, which was not least due to the fact that the jumpers are not allowed to defend themselves publicly.
Although the Norwegians have now been publicly branded as a ski jumping nation, he was astonished that the teams “our supervisors have toughest” even made job offers in spring. “You only notice how ridiculous it is,” he mocked.
For the future, Pedersen hopes that the FIS will put the matter of Ad Acta and clarify with the Norwegian team. After that, a “decent set of rules” is needed with which you can “handle it easier.”