Ski-jumpers accused of enlarging penises to enhance performance

Anti-doping chiefs are investigating claims that ski-jumpers are enlarging their genitals for performance gains. Photo / Getty Images

Anti-doping chiefs at the Winter Olympics are ready to investigate extraordinary suggestions that ski-jumpers are gaining a performance advantage by enlarging their penises.

Reports in the German newspaper Bild have raised fears that professional ski-jumpers are enlarging their genitalia by injecting hyaluronic acid to boost crotch dimensions.

This could be highly significant in ski-jumping because that would permit jumpers to wear a larger suit which would in turn improve their flight lift and thus overall distance.

A study in the journal Frontiers found that, for every 2cm increase in the circumference of a ski suit, there is a corresponding increase in lift of 5% and increase in drag of 4%. This was estimated to equate to a 5.8m increase in jump distance.

As well as unfair performance advantage, the World Anti-Doping Agency (Wada) can prohibit substances on the basis of safety and violations of the “spirit of sport”.

“Ski-jumping is very popular in Poland so I promise you I’m going to look at it,” Witold Banka, the Wada president, said. There was a broad smile as Banka spoke, but Olivier Niggli, Wada’s director general, did also confirm that they could potentially investigate substantiated reports that athletes were injecting themselves with hyaluronic acid.

“I’m not aware of the details of ski-jumping – and how this can improve [performance] – but, if anything was to come to the surface, we would look at anything if it is actually doping related,” Niggli said at a press conference in Milan on Thursday.

“We don’t do other means of enhancing performance, but our list committee would certainly look into whether this would fall into this category. But I hadn’t heard about that.”

Ski-jumpers are measured before each season with a body scanner, with dimensions taken from the lowest part of the genital area, and used as the basis for their suit’s design. Concerns have previously been raised over the potential use of padding inside a suit, but the use of a 3D scanner ensures that outside objects cannot now be inserted beneath the material.

Dr Kamran Karim, a senior consultant at Maria-Hilf Hospital in Krefeld, told Bild: “It is possible to achieve a temporary, visual thickening of the penis by injecting paraffin or hyaluronic acid. However, this does not lengthen it. Such an injection is not medically indicated and is associated with risks.”

Mathias Hafele, from the International Ski and Snowboard Federation (FIS), told Bild that there had been no enlargement with “visible aids”, but the use of injections was not specifically ruled out.

“Currently, no further measurements are planned,” Hafale said. “However, we are already working behind the scenes on methods to improve this complex issue.”

It all follows an 11-month (FIS) investigation and then ban earlier this month of two coaches and a former equipment manager of Norway’s ski-jumping team.

They had admitted conspiring to manipulate the suits of the team’s top jumpers at the Nordic World Ski Championships in Trondheim, Norway, last year. Video evidence of them inserting illegal stitching into the crotch area of their two star jumpers was anonymously posted on social media after an official inspection had taken place.

Banka has also outlined his concern at the presence in Milan of Eteri Tutberidze, the former coach of the Russian skater Kamila Valieva, whose positive doping test was revealed during the Beijing Games in 2022. Valieva was then 15. Tutberidze is now working at the Olympics with the Georgian skater Nika Egadze.

“It is not our decision – the investigation found no evidence that this particular person was engaged in this doping so there is no legal basis to exclude her,” Banka said.

“But, of course, if you ask me personally about my feelings, I didn’t feel comfortable with her presence here at the Olympic Games for sure.”

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