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The Norwegian scandal was serious and verified. Coaching staff were filmed adding extra stitches to the crotches of their men’s suits. The coaches were sanctioned, though the skiers, who could not be proved to have knowledge of the shenanigans, were unpunished. There is a bad look around ski jumping generally right now, and not just as a fashion statement.
How harmful is hyaluronic acid if injected into the penis? There has been little research on the issue, but it raises the question of how much pain an Olympic athlete is prepared to undergo, and how far they will push the rules of ethics and the natural order. The prospect of injections of a natural sponge-like substance that can hold up to 1000 times its weight in water is, however, a reminder of how far athletes will go to cheat their way to an Olympic medal.
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Some of my personal favourites include the Spanish intellectual disability team who won gold at the Sydney 2000 Paralympics, only for 10 of the 12 team members to be found faking their disabilities. There was the American marathon runner Fred Lorz, who, in the 1904 St Louis Olympics, crossed the line in first place and claimed the gold medal until it was discovered he had hitched a ride in a car for the middle 11 miles of the race. The first-ever Olympic doping disqualification was for the Swedish pentathlete Hans-Gunnar Liljenwall, who in 1968 drank two beers to calm himself down for the shooting event.
The USSR invented multiple ways of cheating, none more blatant than pentathlete Boris Onischenko’s epee in the fencing segment in the 1976 Montreal Games, when he could register fake hits by pushing a button that closed an electrical circuit whether he touched his target or not. There was Tonya Harding taking out her rival Nancy Kerrigan via her ex-husband Jeff Gillooly and a baton to the kneecap before the 1994 Games in Lillehammer. There have been the systematic state doping programs and organised corruption among boxing judges.
The history of the modern Olympics has a shadow history of cheating, and cynicism is so deeply entrenched that it has given birth to the depressing spectre of an Enhanced Games. Presumably doping is the only sanctioned form of cheating in that miserable spectacle, and hopping a ride for the marathon is still outside the rules.
But for all the research I have done on this issue, there has never been a proven case of penis enlargement to obtain a competitive advantage.
Reassuringly, the Bild report had not found that any of the ski jumpers who are set to compete in Milan-Cortina had actually injected the hyaluronic acid or inserted any cucumbers. It remains a matter of speculation and suspicion. Officials – and now unprecedented numbers of spectators – will be watching very, very closely.
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