Finland has filed a formal protest with the International Ski Federation over events during the men\u2019s Olympic sprint at the Milan\u2013Cortina Winter Games, alleging rule breaches by Norway and the United States.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
The Finnish Ski Association and the Finnish Olympic Committee submitted the complaint to the sprint jury on Saturday morning.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
The protest concerns the final of Tuesday\u2019s race, in which Norway\u2019s Johannes Kl\u00e4bo took gold ahead of American Ben Ogden and Norway\u2019s Oskar Vike.<\/p>\n
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\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t <\/p>\n
Finland\u2019s Lauri Vuorinen finished fourth.<\/p>\n
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Finnish officials argue that both Norway and the United States gained an advantage through equipment procedures that breached competition rules and instructions issued to team leaders before the event.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
According to the Finnish Olympic Committee, the protest relies on information that emerged only after the race.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
The dispute centres on activity in the service area during the sprint heats.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Finland states that the United States team brought a liquid substance into the waxing zone, which they described as a wax removal agent. Such liquids are banned under FIS regulations for the event.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Norway, in turn, received permission from FIS to use an electric waxing pot in the service area during the heats. Pre-event guidelines sent to teams prohibited the use of such equipment. Finland says other teams were not informed that Norway had been granted an exception.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
The Finnish Ski Association said FIS later admitted it had made an error in handling the matter and apologised.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\u201cFIS has itself admitted making a mistake, and this has led to an unfair competition in which two countries received an undue advantage without others knowing,\u201d said Marleena Valtasola, executive director of the Finnish Ski Association, in a statement.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\u201cSuch action is impossible to accept, and a mere admission of error or apology does not correct the damage that has been done.\u201d<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Finland demands that the results be amended to reflect a situation in which no athlete benefited from action contrary to the rules.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Finnish coaches learned of the incidents on Thursday, two days after the race. At that stage, they were informed that the 48-hour time limit for lodging a protest had expired.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Both the Olympic Committee and the Ski Association state they are prepared to pursue further action if the initial protest is rejected.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
HT<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Finland has filed a formal protest with the International Ski Federation over events during the men\u2019s Olympic sprint…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":12916,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[87],"tags":[9850,158,9845,113,9849,9848,8325,9847,9846,9851,9852],"class_list":["post-12915","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-helsinki","tag-ben-ogden","tag-finland","tag-fis","tag-helsinki","tag-johannes-klabo","tag-lauri-vuorinen","tag-marleena-valtasola","tag-milan-cortina","tag-olympic-sprint","tag-skiing-protest","tag-waxing-rules"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12915","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12915"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12915\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12916"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12915"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12915"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12915"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}