Courtesy of Todd Trapani
For many, the Winter Olympics serves as a much needed reprieve from the harsh winter months. With snowboards flying through the air, skaters landing impossible twists, and curling pucks floating along the ice, the athletes at Milano Cortina 2026 are taking their game to new heights. But with recent suspicions of enhancements made to ski jumper’s genitals in order to fly further down the hill, many fans aren’t sure what to make of the news.
After the issue was first reported by German newspaper Bild, the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) vowed to look into what was now being dubbed “Penisgate.” The claims, now viral across the internet, say that some ski jumpers injected hyaluronic acid into their crotches in order to enlarge the surface area of their ski jump suits. Hyaluronic acid is a common filler used in cosmetic surgeries, and could make drastic differences to the flying distance of a jumper, up to an extra 2.8 meters in jump length for each centimeter of fabric, said the International Ski and Snowboard Federation (FIS).
Each jumper’s speed-suit is tailor made using 3D scanners at the beginning of the season. Every body part is measured, including crotch height, and men are allowed only up to 3cm additional room in the area.
“Every extra centimeter on a suit counts,” said FIS Race Director Sandro Pertile in an interview with fis-ski.com. “If your suit has a 5% bigger surface area, you fly further. Of course, this is a competitive sport and everyone’s on the limit with the rules because everyone wants to win.”
Currently, WADA is investigating these claims to see if they hold any real weight, and if they fall under their jurisdiction for doping. At a recent press conference at the Games, WADA Director General Oliver Niggli said “If anything was to come to the surface, we would look at it and see if it is doping related. We don’t address other [non-doping] means of enhancing performance.”
Witold Bańka, WADA President, responded similarly to the question:
“Ski jumping is very popular in Poland, so I promise you I’m going to look at it.”
This isn’t the first time tampering accusations have flown around the ski jumping community. In the Beijing 2022 Olympic Games, five women’s jumpers were disqualified from the mixed team competition for wearing oversized suits. This year, Slovenia’s Timi Zajc was barred from the Four Hills Tournament for a short suit. Most recently in January, just before the Winter Games, Norwegian team head coach Magnus Brevik and other assistant coaches received an 18 month ban for allowing their athletes to wear manipulated suits during last year’s world championships. The athletes, Johann André Forfang and Marius Lindvik, are both Olympic gold medalists in the event. They were both served three month bans in August.
Interestingly, the Norwegian bans came at a time when WADA’s total positive findings have decreased slightly since 2023. While the number of total samples analyzed has increased by nearly 100,000 since 2012, the number of total positive tests has decreased from 1.24% to 0.78%.
So, why the sudden uptick in ski jumping scandals?
After 11 months of investigations, the FIS ethics committee finally issued a ruling on the cheating coaches and athletes, but it was only after the defendants argued that team Norway’s behavior was merely in keeping with the recent practice of FIS officials looking the other way at rule violations.
“For years, the regulatory framework has been unclear, and enforcement inconsistent and often lenient,” Pål Kleven, Brevik’s lawyer, said in a statement ahead of the ruling.
While FIS lawyers ruled the day claiming that this particular violation was significantly worse than any minor infraction of the past, pressure remained on the Federation’s lack of consistency. In recent years, FIS inspectors have found many suit violations related to the crotch area, however nothing more than warnings and private admonishments have come of them. But after video evidence surfaced conclusively incriminating Brevik and his team, FIS was forced to make extreme changes.
As reported by The New York Times, “The organization hired more equipment controllers and improved its training for them. It added more checkpoints for the suits and limited the number an athlete could use during the season.”
The ruling issued by the ethics committee completely changed the game, which is how today’s scandal was noticed in the first place. While there may not have been more violations since Norway’s ruling, many that once flew under the radar are finally coming above water. With FIS’s latest violation crackdown, “Penisgate” may be more than a farce after all.
As for WADA, hyaluronic acid isn’t on the list of non-approved substances for competition, but their investigation is ongoing. The question of whether genital enlargements count as “doping” remains. FIS certainly thinks the punishment should be equal, as their January ruling stated “Equipment doping has clear analogies in terms of its vice with doping by drugs.”
While no specific athletes at Milano Cortina have yet been accused of the violation, scientists and ski jumpers say it could be plausible. However, FIS has worked swiftly to quash rumors of the affair, claiming that there has “never been any indication, let alone evidence” that the enhancements were taking place. Even athletes at the Games, like Slovenia’s 2022 Olympic silver medalist ski jumper Cene Prevc, told reporters that the reports were nothing new in the community.
“It is a topic that was spoken about quite a lot a month ago in the ski jumping world,” Prevc said in an interview.
Adding to the mystique, recent reports from USA TODAY claim that an Italian plastic surgeon performed penis enlarging procedures on a ski jumper last month. Alessandro Littara, a male genital aesthetic surgeon from Pisa, admitted that the ski jumper told him he wanted the procedure to avoid embarrassment in the changing room after competition.
“Regarding the news in question, I did in fact treat an athlete from that sport, whose name and nationality I will obviously not disclose, nor whether he is participating in these Olympics,” Littara told USA TODAY Sports in an email. “However, I can say that I treated him last month and used a generous dose of hyaluronic acid.”
Why FIS would want to dismiss these rumors given the recent Norwegian scandal is unclear. What is clear is that accusations like these have led to massive alterations in the Olympic anti-doping policy, meaning that these claims aren’t completely without merit. Only time will tell whether penis enlargements are taking over these Winter Games. For now, the balls are in WADA’s court.
