Teemu Lemmettylä believes that skiing sports will soon be talking about other things than the fluoride cream ban. The measurement has become more reliable during the season.
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The complete ban on creams containing fluorine compounds, introduced by the International Ski Federation FIS and the International Biathlon Union IBU for this season, has strongly dominated the sports talk during the World Cup that is about to begin.
Both athletes and cream manufacturers have been concerned about the situation, where there has not been a unanimous view on the fairness and reliability of the control system.
This season, the athletes’ skis are tested for fluoride cream residues with the Alpha II device, a Fourier interferometer, manufactured by the German company Bruker.
A big benefit
Some of the skis are also tested after the finish line. In the sports world, there is a fear that someone will invent a loophole to cheat the test.
The benefit would be greater, especially in humid and warm conditions, than could be achieved with any chemical doping – and the risks would be lower. Chemical doping typically results in a 2-4 year ban, fluoride cream carting is rejected for one competition result.
From the Finnish maintenance team, the situation manager is the most familiar with the matter Teemu Lemmettyäwho has led Finland’s preparations for the new era of skiing.
Calibrations on point
– When we started taking measurements, there could be conflicting results. But it’s all about the process, and now it seems that the calibrations of the equipment have been fine-tuned.
For example, at Ruka, it is critical that the teams’ own measuring devices and FIS’s measuring device giving the competition license both give the green light.
– Now it seems that this state is being reached. I believe that the fluoride testing in Kuusamo will go completely properly and the whole thing will slowly move out of the headlines, laughs Lemmettylä and calculates that he has given more interviews about the fluoride ban than before in his entire long career.
The decisive change has been the data entered into Alpha II’s algorithm memory, which includes a huge number of organic chemical compositions of various fluoride-free creams.
– There were problems with the updated list in the Midsummer countries, but when the data was updated on November 9, the situation became much better. Now there have been problems mostly in small countries that lack their own measuring device and that have taken old skis to the FIS device.
No lottery machine
Lemmettylä reminds us that FIS does not want to ruin its own sports under any circumstances.
– In no way did it want some lottery machine to mess up the patterns.
The Finnish team has gotten used to the new world in what Lemmettylä calls “the corona bubble of skiing”. Thoroughly defluoridated or new skis were fully tested in a clinical setting.
– I took 2,000 samples there.
In Ruka, as the coordinator of fluoride monitoring, the person responsible for the matter was supposed to be at FIS Anders Nilsson. The Swedish doctor of physical chemistry is Bruker’s director for the Nordic countries. In place of Nilsson, who got sick with corona, the fluoride ban coordinator of FIS in Kuusamo is responsible for the matter Augusto Gillio.