Winter Olympics: What does SUI stand for?

So you’re looking at the Olympic schedule and see SUI. What country is that again?

Look at a 2018 Pyeongchang Winter Olympics and what do you see? USA — you know that one. CAN, JPN, GBR — those are all obvious. (Canada, Japan, Great Britain, of course.) Heck, even NOR, KOR and OAR (hey, those rhyme!) are awfully intuitive. (Norway and Korea, naturally. OAR is the only potential trick, and by now you probably know that stands for the Olympic Athletes of Russia, that name under which Russia’s athletes compete after the country itself was banned from competition.) Country abbreviations are, by and large, pretty easy to guess. But what about SUI? That one is…well, less clear. So you’ve googled it and now you’re here. We won’t tell.

SUI refers to Switzerland. Switzerland, or the Swiss Federation, is not intuitively abbreviated to SUI. Nor are past names of Switzerland (Schwyz; Eidgenossenschaft; Helvetia). However, the French translation of the Swiss Federation is Fédération Suisse.

The Olympics are put on by the International Olympic Committee, an organization that is based in Lausanne, Switzerland and uses both French and English as the official language. So, perhaps, then, it makes a certain sense that the IOC would recognize Switzerland as the Fédération Suisse and abbreviate the country’s name to SUI. 

Why they would not, then follow suit and use every country’s French name’s translation is not super clear. Why they would not, conversely, abbreviate it SWI or SWZ or some other variation, is also not super clear.

Next: The greatest Olympic athlete from every U.S. state

Switzerland, or SUI if you prefer, will compete in alpine skiing, biathlon, bobsleigh, cross-country skiing, curling, figure skating, freestyle skiing, ice hockey, luge, Nordic combined, snowboarding, skeleton, ski jumping and speedskating. The Swiss — les Suisses –are quite good, too, so expect to see SUI atop many a podium and in close contest with the USA on the medal board.