There are plenty of reasons why an Olympic athlete might find themselves disqualified from a given event. One obvious reason? Performance-enhancing drugs come to mind, though there will soon be a non-Olympic alternative for some athletes to take part in. But there’s also the matter of making sure one’s equipment is up to snuff — and, beginning with this year’s Winter Olympics, that means not having any PFAS, or “forever chemicals,” in the mix.
What happens if a competitor does turn out to have such chemicals in their equipment? They’ll find themselves disqualified. As GearJunkie’s Mary Andino reports, three skiiers have been disqualified so far due to their use of fluorocarbon wax, also known as “fluoro wax.” As Sean Higgins at Ski Racing Media explained, this kind of wax has generally been used “for that extra bit of speed on race day for decades.”
That is no longer the case, however — at least not in skiing competitions where governing bodies have sought to crack down on the use of forever chemicals. The Olympics fall into that category, and it’s led engineers to seek new ways to replicate the effects of PFAS-heavy products in a way that does not violate the new guidelines.
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