Olympic champion Lundby laments ski jumping's weight issues

Maren Lundby was the world's best female ski jumper for three years, starting in 2018 when she won Olympic gold in South Korea.

At the Beijing Games, the Norwegian had a chance to become the first two-time Olympic champion in her sport. Instead, she decided to skip the World Cup season and a trip to China for the Olympics in order to make her physical and mental health a priority.

“I decided to not compete because I gained some weight," Lundby said Tuesday in an interview with The Associated Press. “I feel like I can’t compete on the level I want to.”

Over the last few months, Lundby has emerged as an advocate for change in a sport that has historically had athletes develop eating disorders as teenagers, all in a quest to be as light as possible to squeeze a few more meters out of their flights through the air.

USA Nordic executive director Billy Demong, a five-time Olympian in Nordic combined, said ski jumping is “one of the most eating-disorder plagued sports” because of the desire to keep pounds off.

“Fat don’t fly, things like that. That’s not something I’m ever going to let a coach say, but the athletes talk to each other and they see it on TV,” Demong said earlier this season during training in Lake Placid, New York. “Some guys took it too far, back in the day, in my era from 2000 to 2005 is when it was really bad.

"We're talking 6-foot guys that we're like 105 to 110 pounds. Wildly light. Some guys could do it and somebody else would starve themselves the wrong way and they would end up in the hospital."

The 27-year-old Lundby is the latest athlete to spark conversation about the intensity of high-level competition — and what's not working anymore for athletes concerned about their health, physical and otherwise.

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