Battle of the Bulge: We Expose a Crotch Conspiracy Rocking the Olympics

Summary

Podcast Summary: "Battle of the Bulge: We Expose a Crotch Conspiracy Rocking the Olympics"

Podcast: Pablo Torre Finds Out
Host: Pablo Torre (The Athletic)
Guest: Matt Futterman (Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, The Athletic)
Date: January 20, 2026

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Overview

In this investigative and tongue-in-cheek “talkumentary” episode, Pablo Torre and guest Matt Futterman unravel an offbeat but serious scandal that has shaken the world of Olympic ski jumping—the so-called "Crotchgate," or the Battle of the Bulge. Focused on the Norwegian national ski jumping team, the show examines issues of cheating, national identity, and the comedic-but-critical stakes of engineering “advantages” in elite sports. Through immersive reporting, firsthand interviews, and a wry sense of humor, Torre and Futterman break down how a literal crotch-enhancing suit led to international scandal just ahead of the 2026 Winter Olympics.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

The Setup: Why Ski Jumping and Why Now?

• [03:44] Pablo brings in Matt Futterman, an expert on Olympic sports scandals, to dig into why the relatively niche world of ski jumping is at the center of a major controversy.
• [04:43] Pablo contextualizes Norway's central role and ski jumping’s history of odd scandals, comparing prior Olympic cheating (e.g., Russian doping) to the current issue.
• [05:17] Matt Futterman: “Olympic sports are completely ridden with scandal from start to finish, certainly in the modern era.”

Ski Jumping Explained

• [07:23] For the uninitiated, Matt and Pablo detail the basics of ski jumping, noting its visual “optical illusion” and dangerous realities (jumpers fly at 65 mph, albeit only 15 ft above ground at maximum height).
• [08:10] Matt Futterman: "It's about the closest I think a human gets to flying."
• Discussion of the ski jumping suit as a source of aerodynamic advantage ("a sail"), and a riff on its David Byrne-style oversized look.

Norway’s National Obsession and Sporting Culture

• [12:21] Deep dive into Norway's historic dominance in ski jumping, rooted in national culture and pride.
• [14:00] Matt Futterman: "A country of 5 million people being the all time leader in Olympic medals in the Winter Games.”
• Interview snippets with Eric, a Norwegian ski jumping insider, who describes the national religiosity around ski jumping and the cultural values of humility and fair play:
  • [17:20] Eric: “This is kind of a holy national sport for us. This has been like a kind of folklore, a very proud tradition for the Norwegians..."

Shift in the Culture: Engineering & Marginal Gains

• [21:24] Eric: “The battle of millimeters and the battle of the grams. I think one thing is the equipment—was the way of how can we get a little better?”
• The edge in ski jumping now comes from minuscule technicalities: suit measurements, binding positions, aerodynamic tweaks.

Enter: The Crotch Conspiracy

• [26:29] Pablo lays out the heart of the scandal: teams meet with an official “crotch inspector” before ski jumping events, who ensures the suit is within legal dimensions.
  • Measured via a 3D body scan and manual inspection, especially sensitive around the crotch area.
  • [27:24] Norwegian Equipment Manager: “Specifically, we have a tool created to measure the crotch measurement of all the athletes which we're doing before the jump and after the jump.”

The Zapruder Tape of Ski Jumping Scandals

• [32:52] A behind-the-curtain whistleblower video catches the Norwegian equipment manager and head coach adding illegal foam padding ("the bulge") to jumping suits—after official measurement and clearance.
  • [34:16] Matt Futterman: “Isn't it great that it happened sometime between 10pm and midnight? ...It's like the Watergate break-in.”
• The mechanics of the cheat: using reinforced thread, foam inserts, and a sewing machine to make prohibited garment modifications, thereby increasing lift and violating FIS rules.

Public Fallout and Disqualifications

• [37:31] Scandal explodes during the 2025 World Ski Championships, resulting in the disqualification of star Norwegian athlete Marius Lindvik and another teammate.
  • [39:05] Matt Futterman: “This absolutely horrifies Norwegians, it sort of cuts to the core of who they are...to cheat like this and get caught is a real sort of national shame.”
• The head coach, Magnus Breivik, admits blame and resigns:
  • [44:03] Pablo Torre: "Quote, it was a deliberate act and consequently it's cheating. I definitely should have stopped it as head coach, end quote."

The Investigation: Project Pine

• [45:04] FIS opens a formal investigation, codenamed Project Pine (not Crotchgate), with a lengthy secret report ultimately leaked to Pablo and Matt.
  • The investigation finds this cheating "an unprecedented level," far beyond past suit manipulation.
• Key Finding: The athletes (jumpers) are not found directly complicit—the guilt centers on coaches and equipment staff.
  • [46:52] Matt Futterman: "The athletes claim they didn't know, and the coaches have said that the athletes didn't know and the investigators have accepted those explanations for the most part."
  • Athletes serve "suspensions" during the off-season, effectively toothless.
  • [47:53] Pablo Torre (reading): “…if true, this is not only surprising, but also risky and irresponsible towards the ski jumpers, given that these changes are likely to affect flight characteristics and therefore the safety of the athletes.”

Ethics, Image, and Scapegoating

• [49:34] Matt Futterman: “Tom Brady was back for the playoffs, wasn't he? Right?...You sort of find your scapegoats and make them the really bad guys.”
• Coaches and equipment manager are banned 18 months, but star athletes remain eligible for the Olympics.
• [50:20] Pablo Torre (quoting FIS): “Now is indeed the time to put down a clear marker as to what is not acceptable in the international winter sport of ski jumping.”

Media, National Shame, and the American Parallel

• The panel discusses how the true scandal is only addressed because it became public—a universal tale in global sports.
  • [51:14] Matt Futterman: "You made us look bad."
  • [51:23] Pablo Torre: "How dare you make us look smaller than we want to be."

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments (with Timestamps)

• “Olympic sports are completely ridden with scandal...” (Matt Futterman, 05:17)

• “It's about the closest I think a human gets to flying.” (Matt Futterman, 08:10)

• “This is kind of a holy national sport for us. This has been like a kind of folklore, a very proud tradition for the Norwegians...” (Eric, 17:20)

• “The battle of millimeters and the battle of the grams.” (Eric, 21:24)

• “We have a tool created to measure the crotch measurement of all the athletes...” (Norwegian Ski Jumping Equipment Manager, 27:24)

• “It's a literal measuring contest.” (Pablo Torre, 28:59)

• “Isn't it great that it happened sometime between 10pm and midnight? ...It's like the Watergate break-in.” (Matt Futterman, 34:16)

• “This absolutely horrifies Norwegians, it sort of cuts to the core of who they are...to cheat like this and get caught is a real sort of national shame.” (Matt Futterman, 39:05)

• “Tom Brady was back for the playoffs, wasn't he?” (Matt Futterman, 49:34)

• “Now is indeed the time to put down a clear marker as to what is not acceptable in the international winter sport of ski jumping.” (Pablo Torre, reading FIS ruling, 50:20)

• “You made us look bad.” (Matt Futterman, 51:14)

• “How dare you make us look smaller than we want to be.” (Pablo Torre, 51:23)

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Key Segments with Timestamps

• 03:44 – Matt Futterman joins; framing why the scandal matters
• 07:23 – Ski jumping basics, physics, and the legendary suit
• 14:00 – Norwegian skiing culture explained, insider Eric introduced
• 21:24 – Eric describes increasing focus on millimeters and marginal gains
• 26:29 – The crotch-inspector measuring ritual
• 32:52 – Discovery and analysis of the cheating video
• 37:31 – Disqualification fallout; Norwegian public reaction
• 45:04 – Project Pine: the secret investigation and its findings
• 49:34 – Scapegoating and who ultimately pays the price
• 50:20 – Panel ruling and how much the story is really about PR
• 51:14 – The shame of getting caught; American parallel drawn

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Tone and Style

The conversation is a blend of serious investigative journalism and playful irreverence. Torre and Futterman riff on everything from “Inspector Crotch” to the optics of national shame, using jokes—“penis parachute,” “measuring contest”—to punctuate genuinely incisive commentary about sports ethics and politics.

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Summary

Pablo Torre and Matt Futterman craft a hilarious and hard-hitting exploration of a seemingly bizarre but revealing Olympic scandal. Through the specifics of Norwegian ski jumping, they unearth universal truths about cheating, reputation, and what nations (and sports fans) are willing to forgive in the name of spectacle. For Norway, the scandal is both more humiliating and more American than many want to admit. The tale of the Battle of the Bulge is a microcosm of every modern sports controversy: secrecy, innovation, a cover-up, the scapegoating of staff, and an unfazed public hungry for the next high-flying spectacle.

Transcript

[Pablo Torre]

Welcome to Pablo Torre Finds Out. I am Pablo Torre and today we're going to find out what this sound is.

[Norwegian Ski Jumping Equipment Manager]

We have a tool created to measure the crotch measurement of all the athletes which we're doing before the jump and.

[Pablo Torre]

After the jump right after this ad.

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[Pablo Torre]

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[Pablo Torre]

This episode is sponsored by Royal Kingdom, an amazing mobile game that is super fun and free to play and also has no annoying ads. If you're like me, this time of year is slightly hectic, there's lots of travel, there are all these awkward moments of downtime and that is where Royal Kingdom comes in as the perfect escape. No matter where you are, the game is just a tap away as it does not require wi fi and is also free to play so you never need to struggle with connecting to the Internet on the plane or train or car you're on. And Royal Kingdom, in case you were wondering, is a Match three puzzle game developed by the creators of Royal Match. Listeners to our show know how much Dan LeBatard has played this game, and with tons of events and thousands of levels, it has got something for everybody, whether you're looking for something to help you relax or whether you're, you know, Dan and you want a new challenge. The levels are also the perfect length, making it possible to get a few in during those football commercial breaks. And in case you were wondering, yes, it does feature a feud between King Richard and the Dark King that is almost as intense as the Cowboys Eagles rivalry, but with significantly better graphics. So what are you waiting for? Join the fun and download Royal Kingdom on the App Store or Google Play. Today, I've been sort of, like, puzzling through what should be the first sort of collaboration that I do with the Times and the Athletic in my capacity as licensing partner of the Athletic Podcast Network and the New York Times company. And I was like, let's get Matt Futterman, Pulitzer Prize winner, right?

[Matt Futterman]

Nailed it. Forget about this, like, small matter of the NFL playoffs that might be going on right now. Who cares about that?

[Pablo Torre]

I was shocked to discover that the Olympics are, like, around the corner, though. It snuck up on me, Matt. Like, that's your life. It's not my life.

[Matt Futterman]

Right.

[Pablo Torre]

And I did think to myself, oh, there's. There's.

[Matt Futterman]

We got.

[Pablo Torre]

We got a news peg here.

[Matt Futterman]

Sneaks up on me a little bit, too.

[Pablo Torre]

I mean, how many is this now?

[Matt Futterman]

This is my 10th that I'll be on the ground for.

[Pablo Torre]

God.

[Matt Futterman]

Yeah.

[Pablo Torre]

I mean, your beat, if I can describe it, at the Athletic is a fun one. I know your byline because you're the guy who does sports scandals, especially around, like, competitive advantage. I mean, you're an author as well, who's covered that topic, generally speaking. And also, you do all these sports that I know nothing about, and that's useful. So thank you for being in studio with me.

[Matt Futterman]

Well, thanks for having me. And I guess we gotta, you know, get you on the tennis court a little more, get you on skis a little more, get you on snow.

[Pablo Torre]

The skis and the snow. I mean, that is a big fascination that I have because I've spent the last, you know, more than I've ever thought thinking about the Winter Olympics, which is full of scandal historically, by the way, to just, like, remind our audience here. It's Russian doping in sochi that was 2014. And there was also, you know, the 15 year old Russian doper in Beijing in 2022. And then, you know, like Tanya Harding and the pipe and various body parts have been very important to understand when it comes to the history of scandal and investigation in your world.

[Matt Futterman]

I mean, Olympic sports are completely ridden with scandal from start to finish, certainly in the modern era. And it's hard to believe something topping the Russian doping scandal of 2014, you know, where they actually like constructed the building with the goal of cheating.

[Pablo Torre]

Well, the question fundamentally that my show is obsessed with is how to cheat. And the follow up question is how to catch the cheaters. And the follow up question to that is what, why? And how does this differ depending on who is cheating? And so the geopolitical lens of like who is cheating and what's their philosophy about it and what are they trying to get away with and what drives them and also what haunts them is why Russia is on one side of the spectrum. And this subject, today's episode, which involves, by the way, you know, we got a sophisticated scheme. We have an actual behind the curtain video that I can't wait for people to understand. We got confidential documents that I'm waving around recklessly already in my, in my hand. It builds to something that can only be fairly described as crotch gate. There are many ways to cheat in sports. You can cork a baseball bat to make it lighter, deflate a football to.

[Sports Commentator]

Make it easier to grip.

[Pablo Torre]

But how do you cheat in ski jumping? If you're the Norwegian team, you alter the suit specifically in the crotch area.

[Matt Futterman]

And they caught Team Norway red handed. Yeah, below the belt. We like to say this is a, a family, family program. But there may be segments where, you.

[Pablo Torre]

Know, it's a good trigger warning.

[Matt Futterman]

Gotta, gotta put the earmuffs on the, on the small children.

[Pablo Torre]

Potentially we're going downhill in a very different sense.

[Matt Futterman]

Def.

[Pablo Torre]

So for people who may already be tuning out because they're like, wait a minute, you tricked us into hearing you talk about a sport that I personally, of course, had very little knowledge of until we started reporting the story with you. The sport, which is ski jumping, I need you to explain because when you watch ski jumping, Matt, what are you seeing as a spectator?

[Matt Futterman]

To some extent, you're seeing an optical illusion, especially when you watch it on television.

[Event Announcer]

Gold medalist to go first. The winner here on Friday.

[Matt Futterman]

It looks like an athlete goes off a jump flying the Praetz flag and is flying hundreds of feet above the ground.

[Sports Commentator]

Oh, amazing.

[Matt Futterman]

And land on skis. And While they are flying hundreds of feet through the air, they're actually never more than about 15ft above the ground. Now, having said that, they do take off at like, you know, 65 miles an hour or something like that, and they're flying down a slope and if they wipe out from 15ft above the ground, it's gonna hurt. They may break a lots of bones and terrible things can happen.

[Pablo Torre]

The youngster is inexperienced.

[Norwegian Ski Jumping Equipment Manager]

He fell on his first jump.

[Pablo Torre]

Yes, we have ski jumping, in fact, to thank for this ridiculous crash on the classic intro for ABC's Wide World of. Spanning the globe. To bring you the constant variety which actually explains the famous line thrill of victory. The thrill of victory. And the agony of defeat. And the agony of defeat. If I may give a suggestion. To ski jumping, you gotta come up with a more dramatic name for what is happening here. You watch this and it's like a flying squirrel. You're watching these people in this position that I have learned physics has suggested that they embrace and they are suborbitally soaring in a fashion that I did not respect sufficiently until I started watching these videos.

[Matt Futterman]

It's about the closest I think a human gets to flying because it's not like hang gliding where, you know, you have something big attached to you. It's not like skydiving where the parachute comes out.

[Pablo Torre]

Ski. Ski flying. Can we come up with like ski soaring Ski?

[Matt Futterman]

Well, I think there is. I think there is a ski flying. Is there? Yeah, I think there is something which is like a real. They go off really, really big jumps and that's really long distance bodies. I heard that terminology, but yes, this is more than just your average, you know, quote unquote ski jump.

[Sports Commentator]

Showtime on the ski jumping hill in the mountains of Zhangshukou. Who will bring it in? Beijing Linh.

[Pablo Torre]

This is Beijing 2022. This is the gold medalist, Matt, Please introduce us to this gentleman as he takes off.

[Matt Futterman]

This is Marius Lindvik. He's Norwegian. He's basically the best ski jumper in the world.

[Sports Commentator]

Oh, he's absolutely nailed it. Lindvik.

[Pablo Torre]

A couple of observations as I watch this closely is like the angle, right? It seems like he's both vertical and horizontal at the same time. There is like an optical illusion thing that you're des. So what he's wearing, they're not pants because it's a suit, but there is a fabric fluttering here around his bottom half.

[Matt Futterman]

Yeah, that's a jumping suit. When you see ski jumpers walking around, in some sense it's like something approaching. I'm gonna Date myself a little bit here. But like David Burns suit.

[Pablo Torre]

Oh, yeah.

[Sports Commentator]

I don't care how impossible.

[Matt Futterman]

It's not making sense. It's something like that.

[Pablo Torre]

The physics of it, right? It's very simplistic. There's a sail kind of dynamic.

[Matt Futterman]

You put a fairly big cloth on these bodies and the wind catches it. You don't want any drag. You want like your body to be in great position and you want to have the smooth material and you want lift, you want the air to really catch as much of that sail, so to speak, as possible.

[Pablo Torre]

This is though, not to be, not to be a drag. This does not seem to be a super popular sport across the world.

[Matt Futterman]

No.

[Pablo Torre]

And so the cradle of this sport.

[Matt Futterman]

Is where is sort of northern and central Europe. There may be a couple others there. But, you know, it's, it's not a particularly accessible sport and, you know, for that reason it hasn't been historically that popular. But where they do it and where it is popular, it's really popular.

[Sports Commentator]

And in fact, he didn't know until Thursday afternoon he would be making this run in front of 40,000 fellow Norwegian.

[Pablo Torre]

94, Lillehammer in Norway. It's like, you know, Brazil hosting the World Cup.

[Matt Futterman]

Absolutely, yeah.

[Pablo Torre]

When you watch the opening ceremony, you actually see a dude carrying the Olympic torch on a ski jump.

[Sports Commentator]

Magnificent. A little bit shaky, but he's down to the cheers. And ski jumping was invented here in Norway 100 years ago, so there's no finer way to bring the Olympic torch into the stadium.

[Matt Futterman]

So many of the sports in the Olympic Games are what we refer to as Nordic sports.

[Sports Commentator]

He said he wasn't nervous, it was.

[Pablo Torre]

Just another day at the office.

[Progressive Insurance Advertiser]

But I don't believe him.

[Matt Futterman]

Nordic is in the country name Norway.

[Pablo Torre]

A person who only knows about Norway through stereotypes is kind of imagining it's basically Mardi Gras. Yes.

[Matt Futterman]

I mean, it's basically Mardi Gras.

[Pablo Torre]

It's Norse Mardi Gras.

[Matt Futterman]

Yeah. You know, this is a party.

[Sports Commentator]

There are two jumpers to go. They're both from Norway and the crowd can smell blood.

[Matt Futterman]

In more recent times, as sports has become part of modern life, I mean, there's just these sports clubs all over Norway. In every little town, there's ski clubs and just about everybody starts out involved in one and stays involved in it. And that's how you get a country of 5 million people being the all time leader in Olympic medals in the Winter Games.

[Pablo Torre]

Unbelievable.

[Matt Futterman]

Out of nowhere, so much of the year, you know, it's really cold, it's really dark. And yet there is this culture of waking up and getting your ass outside, no matter how cold it is, and going and doing something athletic and adventurous in the snow. You got one of the national legends, Espen Bredesen, Who wins the competition. And then you have Lasse Ottison and who's another huge figure there is the.

[Sports Commentator]

New young star as well, to go alongside the old hand, Benison. Watterson and Benison walk together very proudly.

[Pablo Torre]

In front of their nation now, silver medalist sports.

[Matt Futterman]

Silver medalist in ski jumping in 1994 in Lillehammer, which is about as good as it gets. You know, you win a medal in one of your country's national sports on home snow.

[Pablo Torre]

Oh yeah. Lasse Addison, who I hope is better at ski jumping than he is high fiving. That was, you know, not the most.

[Matt Futterman]

Well, this is early generation high five. I think you go back to 94.

[Pablo Torre]

Reading on a curve. It took a bit to get to Norway. In fairness to Lasse Ottissen, Norwegian ski jumping legend.

[Sports Commentator]

Right was Norway's day and in particular that of the young man Ortason and the veteran campaigner Bren. They really ruled today.

[Pablo Torre]

But speaking of Norwegian enthusiasm, you were not there, Matt. You were not there in the, on the mountain in 94. So we wanted to reach out to somebody who was. And so we reached out to a Norwegian ski jumping insider. And I want to clarify, this is not like, you know, the Adam Schefter of ski jumping, although that would be a funny person to exist. This guy, I'm going to let you introduce him. Who is this man?

[Matt Futterman]

Well, let's call him Eric.

[Eric (Norwegian Ski Jumping Insider)]

My name is Eric. It sounds like a Norwegian name and it is. I am 70 years old. I'm retired.

[Matt Futterman]

We'll let him introduce himself.

[Eric (Norwegian Ski Jumping Insider)]

I was on the Olympics in Lillehammer and I lived in Oslo then. And I remember, oh, 3:30 in the morning, I got up, we took the bus down to the train station, this two hour trains and then we were up in the hills around 6:30. And it was alive from that moment until we went home. I think about 2:30 late night. It was fantastic.

[Matt Futterman]

Yeah.

[Pablo Torre]

Listening to this guy talk, there is a religiosity, I dare say, to his description.

[Eric (Norwegian Ski Jumping Insider)]

This is kind of a holy national sport for us. This has been like a kind of folklore, a very proud tradition for the Norwegians because we have so many good jumpers that have won gold medals in world championship and in Olympics and everything. So this is.

[Pablo Torre]

And listening to him there, Matt, I mean, I'm looking at the statistics and we're talking all time. 12 ski jumping Olympic golds, 36 medals total. That's the most ever. And then, you know, they just won the. The most recent thing was the world championships.

[Matt Futterman]

Yeah, they have, but they're not as dominant as they used to be.

[Pablo Torre]

It makes me want to just compare and contrast whatever the American competitive ideology is around sports or the Norwegian attitude. How would you summarize that?

[Matt Futterman]

So I sort of think of the American idea of competition as win at just about every cost. You would talk about somebody in America as, you know, being really driven and being really ambitious and being really competitive. And those would be compliments in Norway. Those are kind of like insults.

[Pablo Torre]

You mean naked desperation? To win is not a virtue.

[Matt Futterman]

No, you're supposed to win. You're supposed to want to win, but it's not supposed to look like you want to win. You know, you're supposed to look like it's just a part of your life and this is what you do. You know, fair play is very important. Humility is really, really important. You just don't want to do too much peacocking. End zone dances would not be a big thing. It's just a sort of a completely different way of going about sports. And that leaks all the way down to the junior level. I've mention before that there are these sports clubs and like all the kids are involved with them. But it's really important to the Norwegians that they stay pretty unserious and pretty uncompetitive until the kids are pretty much teenagers. If you just, you know, nakedly, from the time you were five years old, singularly went after this one thing that would like, not be cool.

[Pablo Torre]

It reminds me, if I can be now psychologically geopolitical for a second. It reminds me of one of the things that I found in the research for this, which is that Norway, as you might imagine, does have the highest electric car adoption rate on the planet. It's like 96%. And simultaneously, beneath that snowy surface, the economy is built on oil money.

[Matt Futterman]

It is now.

[Pablo Torre]

Yeah. From like the natural gas supply, export.

[Matt Futterman]

Right. It is a land of contradictions. I think like most lands, is what we have figured out in the modern world and what we're more honest about these days. People drive nice cars there. It's beautiful. Everyone seems to have a country house.

[Pablo Torre]

Yes. Healthcare and country houses built atop oil reserves.

[Matt Futterman]

Right. So there is both, you know, happiness and celebration and enjoyment of all this stuff.

[Pablo Torre]

Enthusiastic high fiving.

[Matt Futterman]

Yes, enthusiastic high fiving, but also a good bit of guilt.

[Pablo Torre]

All of which brings us back, I Think to this notion that ski jumping, as much as it is this thing that Norway has dominated, remains this game of inches, especially when it comes to the technical engineering of the sport.

[Matt Futterman]

Yes, you are using every little edge. And like we've seen in the last, say, 20 years in baseball, for instance, like, the edges become harder and harder and harder to find. And, I mean, I think if we could go back to, you know, our Norwegian friend Eric, what he says is around 2012, 2015 or so, he started to see sort of a change in the culture.

[Eric (Norwegian Ski Jumping Insider)]

The kind of development that we saw all this year was the. Was the way of how can we get a little better. The battle of millimeters and the battle of the grams. I think one thing is the equipment where they tried. Is it possible to get the suit a little bigger? Maybe we fly 10cm longer. Is it possible to get the bindings a little bit forward as all these things?

[Matt Futterman]

If the drag increases by 1%, then the length of a jump goes down by more than a meter. That's a lot. By the same token, if you can increase the lift that we talked about by just 1%, then the jump goes up by nearly 2 meters. That's where you get the scientists into it. And this becomes more than, you know, just a bunch of guys drinking beer and going flying off a ski jump and seeing how far they can go.

[Pablo Torre]

But now I think what Eric was reflecting on is what happens when that very male experience becomes an even more male experience of a bunch of dudes trying to figure out how can we make ourselves bigger down there.

[Matt Futterman]

Yeah, well, maybe not make the anatomy bigger, but make it. Make the stuff around the anatomy bigger.

[Pablo Torre]

Yeah, it's very. It's a very important distinction. We're talking about a penis parachute, not the actual penis.

[Eric (Norwegian Ski Jumping Insider)]

It was so shameless, obviously, that they have really passed the border for what's normal and not normal.

[Pablo Torre]

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[Pablo Torre]

I just need to be very clear about this for both legal and journalistic reasons before you go ski Jumping at the highest level. There is in fact a meeting with a crotch inspector.

[Matt Futterman]

Basically he's inspecting lots of things, but one of the things they inspect is the dimensions of every part of your body. Because there's an opportunity to create what we would refer to in family language as a larger inseam.

[Pablo Torre]

That's the New York Times company's approved description.

[Matt Futterman]

Right. And that'll give you more lift.

[Pablo Torre]

And in fact, in case you think this is a purely abstract premise, we do helpfully have a video of Inspector Crotch.

[Norwegian Ski Jumping Equipment Manager]

Has it always gone this way?

[Eric (Norwegian Ski Jumping Insider)]

We have not.

[Pablo Torre]

What is Inspector Crotch's real name? Matt?

[Matt Futterman]

That is Lasse Utson, who we recently saw giving one of the greatest high fives in the history of sport. He, in his post jumping life, has become one of the most respected Nordic sports officials. He is the director of Nordic Combined for fisp, the International Skiing Federation, which is the Federation International du Ski. And he generously volunteered to demonstrate how FIS gets a 3D model of all of its athletes dimensions.

[Pablo Torre]

And for those who are not watching on YouTube, you've made a horrible mistake because this is in fact Norwegian ski jumping legend Lasse Utzen, shirtless and only wearing his underwear. And he is now bald. And he is in great shape objectively. And both his left hand and right hand are gripping the sort of like supports on what appear to be a vertical rotisserie, which is rotating endlessly 360 degrees.

[Matt Futterman]

What they're doing is they're getting, you know, a 3D model of him so that they can get his precise dimensions. And from those precise dimensions they can regulate how big a suit he can actually wear.

[Pablo Torre]

And I love that we asked for this video and they gave it to us. It is a very invasive fact checking process.

[Matt Futterman]

If you're going to be a ski jumper, you're going to bear it all and you're going to get measured.

[Pablo Torre]

It's a literal measuring contest.

[Matt Futterman]

Yeah, that's out there now. I guess you've put it out there.

[Pablo Torre]

You know, you are a Pulitzer Prize winner and I assigned you.

[Matt Futterman]

Well, I was part of a team just to make sure. I don't want to big myself up too much.

[Pablo Torre]

Well, on this team, on the Pablo Torre finds out team, you're supposed to ask a very hard question.

[Matt Futterman]

Is it embarrassing the way they get.

[Norwegian Ski Jumping Equipment Manager]

Measured for the suits?

[Matt Futterman]

Is it awkward?

[Norwegian Ski Jumping Equipment Manager]

I assume that you're referring to the crotch area of the suit, which is the area that are the most, or let's say has the most influence in terms of the suit.

[Matt Futterman]

What Lasse told us was the reason they're getting this 3D model is because there's a very specific rule that the suit can only be 4cm larger than your body surface area.

[Norwegian Ski Jumping Equipment Manager]

So we're measuring the whole body. How big is it? How. The circumference of your legs, of your upper body, of your arms and everything so that we have that on file with everyone. And we're measuring the athletes. We're measuring the athletes with the suit on and with the suit off to see that this is correlated to the 3D measurements that we have done earlier. And specifically, we have a tool created. Created to measure the. The crotch measurement of all the athletes, which we're doing before the jump and after the jump.

[Matt Futterman]

You mentioned the word circumference. Are you talking about the circumference of the legs? What exactly are we.

[Norwegian Ski Jumping Equipment Manager]

The circumference of the legs, yes. So right leg, left leg, the middle one, we're not measuring for the, for the male athletes.

[Matt Futterman]

Okay, got it, got it. Thank you for that, for that clarification.

[Pablo Torre]

Yeah, I'm not going to even comment on, you know, I, I thought it was girth, but we'll go with what he decided.

[Matt Futterman]

You got to ask. You got to ask the really hard questions in this business.

[Pablo Torre]

As an investigative reporter, we will settle for nothing less.

[Event Announcer]

Good afternoon, everybody, and welcome to Norway, to Trondheim, to the Nordic Ski World Championships and the first medal opportunity for the best ski jumping men in the world on the normal hill.

[Pablo Torre]

So now it's March 2025, Matt. We're at the World Ski Championships which we alluded to before. So at the start, what happens is that the Norwegian national ski jumping team starts off feeling the thrill of victory. They get three golds, three bronzes, and their superstar, Marius Lindwig. Lindwick has matched Wellinger's distance dominates the normal hill.

[Event Announcer]

Lindwick surely has done it and he has.

[Pablo Torre]

Then as the weekend arrives, March 7, it's the main event.

[Event Announcer]

Good afternoon, everyone. Welcome to Norway, to Trondheim and to the big hill.

[Pablo Torre]

And here, Marius Lindvik, defending Olympic gold medalist.

[Event Announcer]

The winner of the qualification, two gold medals and a bronze medal in his.

[Pablo Torre]

Kit bag already isn't in second place at the moment. Through the first round of jumps with another shot at goal.

[Norwegian Ski Jumping Equipment Manager]

It's been a fantastic championships and I think everyone was extremely happy about how, you know, we've had full house of spectators, we've had very, very exciting events in.

[Pablo Torre]

But in the middle of all of this, Matt, with Inspector Crotch himself in attendance, everyone's attention turns somewhere else to.

[Event Announcer]

One with the bookmakers to win today.

[Norwegian Ski Jumping Equipment Manager]

Firstly, I heard some rumors that some national federations were making a protest. I mean, there was a lot of rumors back and forth. And then we also saw that, you know, this video that was sent out, it was public, someone had videotaped something. And, and you know, not saying that.

[Pablo Torre]

That there's a video that a whistleblower releases. And this video, it's no exaggeration to say that this is taking us behind a curtain because it's literally taking us behind a curtain. And so what we can see now, Matt, what the world can see now is Norway's equipment manager as this guy secretly fondling crotch foam while his boss, who's the head coach of the storied Norwegian national team we've been talking about, is directly supervising the foam. This, by the way, long after each of the two suits that they're altering on this video have been measured by Inspector Crotch.

[Matt Futterman]

Yeah, I mean, we talked about drag before. I mean, they're trying to make the surface of the suit as smooth as possible and they're trying to increase the lift by, you know, making it sort of solid so it really can hold the air.

[Pablo Torre]

And so I just got to be clear. I do believe this is the only cheating scandal I have ever covered or seen that involves an actual sewing machine, which is right there. You can see that as well. And yes, this is team Norway using reinforced thread to stitch this extra bulge which tears the rule book apart. All of this happened apparently sometime between 10pm and after midnight the night before the race.

[Matt Futterman]

Isn't it great that it happened sometime between 10pm and midnight?

[Pablo Torre]

It is.

[Matt Futterman]

I mean, it's like the Watergate break.

[Pablo Torre]

That's right.

[Matt Futterman]

It's just like, it's just great. It would be so much less interesting if it was 3:30 in the afternoon while they were getting a coffee or something like that.

[Pablo Torre]

There is the most obvious deep throat joke here that I also will just leave to the side.

[Matt Futterman]

Do you know about the Zapruder tape from the Kennedy assassination? It was this. Is this video like the Zapruder video of ski jumping?

[Norwegian Ski Jumping Equipment Manager]

Well, I mean, it's, I wouldn't say that those two, let's say, cases can be similar. I mean, I think the Kennedy case is a world known thing and, and even though ski dumping would like to be, you know, global and world famous, but for sure there's, there's a, a certain thing to that tape that of course makes it different than, than, than, than, than anything else.

[Matt Futterman]

Yeah, I don't want to compare it necessarily to Doping. Because doping is a different thing that like brings the health of an athlete into it. And the main reason like you can't dope is because that gives me an advantage. And unless you do something that is likely harmful to your body, you're not going to be able to compete with me. So that's different. At the same time, I sort of feel like this is as if we, you know, had a kid in camera in Lance Armstrong's team's blood bank, essentially, and they were getting blood transfusions before and during the Tour de France. And if someone had had a camera in there and shot them like with their arms out, getting the blood out of the refrigerator, this is sort of what we're seeing. It's something that you really never see in sports. And suddenly it's like there's.

[Pablo Torre]

And much like the dope big scandals you reference, it involves the highly problematic use of needles.

[Matt Futterman]

There you go.

[Pablo Torre]

It's just hard not to compare this to Deflategate, the last time there was a massive equipment related scandal. Of course, the opposite. Sort of a scandal in which their ball became smaller.

[Matt Futterman]

Yeah, right. Isn't that the irony?

[Pablo Torre]

Tom Brady?

[Matt Futterman]

Isn't that the irony of ironies? But yes, the New England Patriots deflating the balls a little bit so that Tom Grady could grip them a little better in cold weather and bad weather. And text messages on his phone, which he ultimately took a hammer to in one of the great.

[Pablo Torre]

Forgot about that.

[Matt Futterman]

One of the great references in any investigation. We tried to get the phone, but Mr. Brady destroyed the phone with a hammer or something like that.

[Pablo Torre]

You know what? On the list of things I loved out to flake it, I had the deflator being the nickname of the guy doing the deflating. I had Bill Belichick having to talk about the ideal gas law. And I forgot about Tom Brady destroying his own phone with a hammer.

[Matt Futterman]

Yeah. You think there were some pictures on that phone that he didn't want to go public?

[Pablo Torre]

I would love to find out in this case. This blew up the World Championships.

[Matt Futterman]

It absolutely blew up the World Championships. Cause the World Championships are in Norway. Norway's doing really well, but it breaks in the middle of everything.

[Pablo Torre]

And so the reigning Olympic gold medalist, Marius Lindvik, Norway's hero, who again was in second place through just the first round, gets disqualified for meddling in this event, as does his teammate, who was wearing the other illicitly altered suit. But the thing I want to mention here is that Marius Lindvik actively refused to feel the agony of defeat.

[Event Announcer]

And he leads that's almost 140. He is on fire.

[Pablo Torre]

In fact, he decided to jump anyway.

[Event Announcer]

He's celebrating despite the fact that he's off the podium.

[Pablo Torre]

Perhaps because to quote another guy wearing a suit that was way too big. I don't care how impossible it seems.

[Norwegian Ski Jumping Equipment Manager]

And in this case we, we after, you know, two, three different kind of tests that we did, we saw that there was something in the crutch area that was not supposed to be like it felt like or how it looked. A very chaotic day, that's for sure. I've never seen anything like it before. And of course needed to bring that on to our system and into our ethics department and make sure that it was handled in a professional and good way. When we saw something like this going.

[Pablo Torre]

On and in this case, given the geopolitical context, kind of like the Norwegian.

[Matt Futterman]

Nightmare, total nightmare also, and that's the other wrinkle in it is because this like absolutely horrifies Norwegians, it sort of cuts to the core of who they are. You know, we spoke about before is that like it's great to win but you're not supposed to want to win that badly. It's not supposed to be that important. And you know, to cheat like this and it is, you know, just cheating, it's breaking the rules. To do it this way and then to get caught, oh is just a real sort of national shame.

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[Pablo Torre]

Okay, I have to tell you, I was just looking on ebay, where I go for all kinds of things I love. And there it was.

[Matt Futterman]

That hologram trading card.

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[Pablo Torre]

What's going on in Norway? The Cheeto of Scandinavia ski jumping.

[Matt Futterman]

Norwegians admitted to cheating by using manipulated jumpsuits with a reinforced thread.

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And the International Ski and Snowboard Federation have opened an investigation.

[Pablo Torre]

We still have many unanswered questions. We must get to. The bottom of. This incident will have consequences. Seize the suits as it investigates, leaving the fate of the team hanging by a thread.

[Matt Futterman]

That's the evening news.

[Pablo Torre]

I'm John Dickerson. I'm Maurice Dubois. Norway isn't in the international news that much. And so when this cuts through, like, on television, and it turns out the penis parachute is real, it turns out the battle of the bulge has been waged by the head coach himself. What was the reaction, like, behind the scenes?

[Matt Futterman]

I think there's a general thinking now that, like, we've pretty much lost a sense of shame in the world. Like, people just do. And, you know, if they get caught, they get caught. They shrug their shoulders, they move on, and they try and, you know, make a TikTok video and resuscitate their reputation, become influencers, whatever. You know, they figure. They figure it out. I mean, even the Russians in 2014, like, they never, like, really issued a huge apology for constructing a building to pass dirty and clean urine through secret passageways. They just sort of shrugged their shoulders and are like, yeah, okay, you guys cheat too. That's not how it goes in Norway. Like, this is sort of a national reckoning on how could this possibly have happened, how could we possibly do this? And the guy at the center of it, the coach, Magnus Breivik, pretty much immediately falls on his sword.

[Pablo Torre]

Quote, it was a deliberate act and consequently it's cheating. I definitely should have stopped it as head coach, end quote. So these documents in front of us, Matt, these are fresh off our printer because as we described, the head coach has fallen on his sword. But much like the crotch inspector's 360 degree rotation of an issue, there was a further, deeper investigation that took place. And this I'll read the headline notice of charge to the FIS Ethics Committee concerning a violation of the FIS rules on the prevention of manipulation of competitions and the FIS Universal Code of Ethics. And this was published in August of 2025 and obtained by us just yesterday.

[Matt Futterman]

You're basically holding an explanation of the findings of a rather secret investigative report that only a handful of people at FISK have even reviewed.

[Pablo Torre]

It has a code name. Crotchgate is not the code name, in fact, codename Project Pine.

[Matt Futterman]

Yeah, I don't want to comment on the wood involved.

[Pablo Torre]

Neither of us will, because we're too classy and too journalistically rigorous looking through this. And I just need your help in establishing what did these investigators find out?

[Matt Futterman]

What they had to do is they had to sort of raise this to the highest level and bring in, you know, some independent people, because this all reflects very badly on FIS itself. They knew immediately that they were going to be called into question in terms of their inspection processes, and they didn't want to be accused of sort of washing this all away and making it go away, because it would make their competitions and their athletes look bad and make their sport look like it was rife with cheating. The question is, how far beyond the sort of usual pushing the envelope does this go? And what they find out is that this really is sort of an unprecedented level of cheating. It's not simply just kind of a salacious video of, you know, we gotcha. What we got you doing was something that really is unlike the garden variety messing around with the suits that has happened in the past.

[Pablo Torre]

But in any good investigation into a cheating scandal, there is the question of who knew what and when, right? What did the President know and when did he know it, as they said in a certain darkened garage, was the coaching staff that we saw, were they acting alone? What was the. Did the athletes know?

[Matt Futterman]

So the athletes claim they didn't know, and the coaches have said that the athletes didn't know and the investigators have accepted those explanations for the most part. I mean, the athletes did receive some very, very light penalties.

[Pablo Torre]

What does that mean? That they got light penalties?

[Matt Futterman]

So the athletes received some very light penalty suspensions of a couple months that they were able to serve during the summer. Basically, you know, this is sort of like Igishvitek, the former world number one tennis player getting suspended for allegedly doping, not intentionally, and getting a suspension that you served during December.

[Pablo Torre]

Right.

[Matt Futterman]

So it's kind of like a starting.

[Pablo Torre]

Pitcher getting suspended games that he's not pitching.

[Matt Futterman]

Yeah, if you get a four day suspension as a starting pitcher. Exactly. So, yeah, I mean, they got very light suspensions.

[Pablo Torre]

According to the investigative report, quote, according to the accounts of the key coaches and athletes concerned, the athletes were apparently not informed of the alterations and did not test the jumping suits. If true, this is not only surprising, but also risky and irresponsible towards the ski jumpers, given that these changes are likely to affect flight characteristics and therefore the safety of the athletes. Which is a funny other concern to bring up that like, whoa, if you did and if you didn't know, maybe you should have wanted to know, given how like your whole, you know, body flying through the air off a 20 story. How many stories is it?

[Matt Futterman]

The tower is, you know, about 25 stories. Depending on the jump, somewhere between 20 and 30 stories. And keep in mind, it's also that tower is at the top of a mountain.

[Pablo Torre]

Right?

[Matt Futterman]

So it's real. You're really high. You're really high. You're going really fast.

[Pablo Torre]

I think I'd want to know.

[Matt Futterman]

By the way, like, these Norwegian ski jumpers, they're gonna be in the Olympics. The coaches and the equipment manager have been made the fall guys for this.

[Pablo Torre]

Well, so now we get to the, to the brass tacks of this, right? Which is without imputing too much motive, given that we cannot read the minds of these people. The incentive structure is worth outlining, which is that the coaches, who we met for the first time behind that curtain on that video, yes, they are being punished. The equipment manager is being punished. But the act, the stars, the guys you'll be seeing on TV when you watch the Olympics within weeks. It seems like the product, the celebrity, the, the, the actual, you know, potential upside here for the sport and for the country that is being protected.

[Matt Futterman]

Yeah, Tom Brady was back for the playoffs, wasn't he? Right? I mean, isn't that sort of what always happens in sports, except in rare cases? You sort of find your scapegoats and make them the really Bad guys. And that is one of the reasons that Fisk believes that they should, you know, get a really severe penalty with an 18 month suspension. And in fact, you know, what the confidential investigative reports appears to have found is that, yes, they are paying a huge price because it was caught on tape. Because they were caught on tape, they were responsible for a huge damage to the reputation of a sport.

[Pablo Torre]

Yes, this is a 31 page, 68 point formal ruling that got handed down last Thursday on letterhead. And it reads, the independent experts and the ethics committee here ultimately upholds the 18 month suspensions for the coach and for the sewing machine guy. And the panel also claims that it is, quote, unconvinced that fists would have mitigated the sanctions if there had not been publicity surrounding the video declaring, quote, now is indeed the time to put down a clear marker as to what is not acceptable in the international winter sport of ski jumping. End quote. We've talked a lot here about how this is a very Norwegian story and there's a very exotic northern European aspect to it that sounds pretty American. Like the biggest problem, actually, is that all you people talked about it. Now we got to do something about it. The biggest problem, in fact, is pr, right?

[Matt Futterman]

You made us look bad.

[Pablo Torre]

How dare you?

[Matt Futterman]

How dare you make us look bad for the lax way in which we were doing our jobs.

[Pablo Torre]

How dare you make us look smaller than we want to be.

[Matt Futterman]

Exactly. It's in some ways a unique scandal. In other ways, it's just like all the rest of them.

[Pablo Torre]

Yeah. Matt Futterman, thank you for investigating a a story that is more familiar than I think any of us, frankly, would like to admit.

[Matt Futterman]

Pretty familiar.

[Pablo Torre]

Y. For a lot more on this story, we do encourage you to read our colleague Matt Futterman's exhaustively reported piece in the Athletic is out right now. This has been Pablo Torre Finds Out, a Meadowlark Media production. And I'll talk to you next time.

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