No detail too small for equipment police at the Winter Olympics

For the past few months, winter athletes have proved how arduous it is to make the 230-member U.S. Olympic team. Teenagers eliminated Olympic veterans. History was irrelevant. The rigorous selection process even killed one athlete’s bid to vie for a gold medal three-peat.

Yet as difficult as it was to make the team, it is trivially easy to be disqualified in Sochi for reasons that have nothing to do with skill.

At every Olympics, a small army of officials inspects athletes’ competition gear to make sure it complies with pages and pages’ worth of technical specifications.

Rules dictate everything, including how many millimeters apart the bolts on a sled must be, how large a bandage may be placed on an injury, the maximum thickness of a ski boot sole (including all inserts), the top price a luger can pay for shoes, even how much wind must be able to pass through a downhill ski suit.

The technical delegates travel the world with calipers, scales, temperature sensors and radius gauges, and measure these minutiae before events, after events, sometimes even between heats.

They often catch people, too.

(UPDATE: On Saturday, two men were disqualified from a ski jumping race for suit violations — Anders Johnson of Park City, Utah and Canadian Matthew Rowley.)

On a single weekend in late November, two-time Olympic medalist Elisabeth Goergl of Austria finished second in a World Cup super-G race, then was disqualified because her ski was 12-hundredths of a millimeter too wide in front of the binding. One day earlier, skeleton world champion Noelle Pikus-Pace of the U.S. won a World Cup race and was disqualified because she had a tiny piece of tape on her sled handle that officials considered to be performance-aiding. It was the first disqualification in her 12-year career.

“It passed an inspection just a day or two earlier,” Pikus-Pace said afterward. “They said it was fine. They’re saying they didn’t see it. But it was there, so it was frustrating. Despite losing out on the gold medal … and (not) earning those points, it was more hurtful knowing that people saw that DQ next to my name, and knowing that I did absolutely nothing wrong.”

At bigger events, equipment ejections can sting even more.

At the 1994 Winter Olympics, American bobsledder Brian Shimer was ready to start the third (of four) runs in the four-man event, but his sled was disqualified because its steel runners were more than 4 degrees (Celsius) too hot. Heated runners offer a significant speed advantage.  

At the 2009 Nordic combined world championships, a lost race bib cost the U.S. team a chance at a relay medal. The skier, Bill Demong, later found the bib at the bottom of his ski jumping suit.

And in Sochi, athletes have to worry about a whole new set of specifications issued by the International Olympic Committee that govern the legal size — or absence — of logos on their clothing, accessories and gear.

The rationale for equipment rules varies.

Some ensure safety: If a bobsled is too light, it can be unstable at high speeds. If the trigger resistance of a biathlete’s rifle is too soft, the gun could fire accidentally.

Others are administrative: A year before Demong lost his start bib and wasn’t allowed to use a substitute, his Nordic combined teammate Johnny Spillane was disqualified at a World Cup race for failing to wear transponders, a backup timing device. 

One Winter Olympic sport, however, is practically free of such rules: curling.

The World Curling Federation does have a dress code, but it is mostly concerned with color coordination — noting, for example, that if kilts are worn they should match the tights — and doesn’t stipulate whether shirts must be tucked in. Nor are there hypervigilant mandates about broom size.

That’s not to say curling officials aren’t on the lookout for electronically heated brush pads, laser guns to determine the speed of the stones, or battery-operated brush heads.

In those cases, “umpires would step in and remove the equipment,” said Danny Parker, a WCF spokesman.

Just don’t mess up the ice. According to the WCF rulebook, a player will be ejected for three incidents of “ice abuse,” which means damaging the surface with “equipment, hand prints or body prints.”

Pikus-Pace, the skeleton athlete, was not given three strikes — or even a warning or a fine — for her violation, that little piece of tape on her sled handle. But her DQ has only made her more driven.

“It lit a passion in me that I haven’t felt for a long time,” she said, “and it’s continued to grow.”

She went on to win four of the next seven World Cup races and will be a gold medal favorite in Sochi, where she also won last year’s test event on the Olympic track.

“Despite losing those points in Calgary,” she said, “my integrity means everything, and I know I would never cheat.

“I’m just excited to move forward.”