Aerodynamic cheating? ski jumpers enlarge penises to improve performance

Anti-doping authorities at the Milan-Cortina 2026 Olympic Games (6 to 22 February) said on Thursday (5) that they will investigate suspicions about a method allegedly used by ski jumpers to increase the size of their penis in order to improve their performance. “Ski jumping is very popular in Poland, so I promise I will investigate this,” said the president of the World Anti-Doping Agency (Wada), Polish Witold Banka, when asked about the matter at a press conference.

These suspicions, revealed by the German press, are based on the theory that ski jumpers are undergoing hyaluronic acid injections to increase the size of their groin and thus modify the width of their competition suits. This procedure would allow jumpers to gain greater surface area in the air to fly longer and therefore land further.

“I don’t know the details of ski jumping, nor how it can improve performance, but if it happens, we will look at all the information to see if it is indeed related to doping,” said Olivier Niggli, director general of Wada.

In January, in the German newspaper Bild, Kamran Karim, a doctor at the Maria Hilf hospital in Krefeld (near Düsseldorf), stated that it was possible to create a “temporary and visible penis enlargement thanks to injections of paraffin or hyaluronic acid”, but that this practice carried “risks”.

Ski jumpers’ competition costumes are strictly regulated and any modifications can result in penalties. Three members of the Norwegian national ski jumping team’s coaching staff were suspended for 18 months in January by the International Ski Federation (FIS) Ethics Commission after being accused of tampering with costumes during the 2025 World Cross-Country Ski Championships in Trondheim, Norway.

They were subsequently suspended for three months by the FIS. The Norwegian Federation eventually admitted that the costumes had been intentionally modified, but that the two jumpers were not responsible for the fraud.

*With AFP