Norwegians don’t divulge athletes’ weights because of concerns over eating disorders
PYEONGCHANG, South Korea – When Japan’s Sara Takanashi soared off the ski jump at the 2018 Winter Games, reporters could click on the website at the Pyeongchang Games and confirm details perhaps of interest to fans or even physicists.
At 5 feet and 97 pounds, Takanashi, who won a bronze medal with two jumps of 103.5 meters, is one of the smallest athletes at the Winter Games — although it’s increasingly difficult to make comparisons.
When Norway’s Maren Lunby won the event, reporters clicking on the website could find her official height, 5-7, but no weight. That was no oversight.
Norway withholds the weights of its athletes, a policy designed to be sensitive to the perils of weight-related disorders.
The problem of eating disorders among Olympic athletes has become more transparent and potentially more serious. Leading up to the 2018 Winter Olympics, Gracie Gold of the USA and Yulia Lipnitskaya of Russia dropped out of contention to seek treatment for serious eating disorders.
“Focus on sport should be something else than weight,” Halvor Lea, spokesman for the Norway Olympic Committee, told USA TODAY in an email, “and in a society with a lot of challenges regarding weight focus on young men and women, our choice is to drop to inform about athletes weight.”
Former Olympic athletes who acknowledged struggling with eating disorders include Nadia Comăneci, the Romanian gymnast; Cathy Rigby, the American gymnast; and Bahne Rabe, a German rower who won eight gold medals before his 2001 death that stemmed from anorexia.
Nancy Kerrigan, the former U.S. figure skater who said she developed an eating disorder after she was attacked before the 1994 Olympics, is producing a documentary about the prevalence of eating disorders in athletes.
Norway began addressing the issue about 10 years ago. The decision to withhold the weights of its athletes is thought to have developed during the lead-up to the 2008 Summer Olympics through the country’s handball team, according to Lea.
“This is part of our work with values in elite sport,” Lea said. “There is no reasonable argument that an athlete should have to inform about his/her weight. Information about weight is not important, and in respect with athletes, our decision is not to inform about it.”
Yet there appears to be varying views on the matter and no effort to create uniformity.
For the U.S. Olympic Committee, what information about the athletes ends up on the official website is left up to each sport’s organizing committee, USOC spokesman Mark Jones said. He declined to comment further.
Mark Adams, spokesman for the International Olympic Committee, said he wasn’t aware of any official position on the matter. “I don’t think we would take a view on that,” he said. “I think it’s up to each team to decide what they want or don’t want to put.”