You’ve probably heard of doping allegations at the Olympics, but have you heard of athletes injecting their penises to get a leg up on the competition?
The newest scandal to come out of the Milano Cortina Winter Olympics is being dubbed “Penisgate” because ski jumpers are being investigated for potentially injecting their members with hyaluronic acid so they can hit higher jumps.
We’re used to hearing about athletes using steroids and other performance-enhancing drugs to help them take home the gold, but now the World Anti-Doping Agency is looking into whether or not ski jumpers are enhancing their penis size to help them beat out the competition.
“Ski jumping is very popular in Poland so I promise you I’m going to look at it,” WADA president Witold Banka, who is from Poland, told The Guardian.
French pole vaulter Anthony Ammirati may have gone viral at the 2024 Summer Olympics when his sizable bulge got in the way of him winning a gold medal, but according to German newspaper Bild, which was the first to report on the issue, ski jumpers are trying to enhance their penis size in order to increase their chances of winning.
Last year, Team Norway skiers Marius Lindvik and Johann André Forfang and coaches Magnus Brevik and Thomas Lobben were banned after it was discovered that they had adjusted the crotch seams on their suits at the 2025 World Ski Championships.
Turns out, increasing the size of the suits leads to longer jump lengths, so now athletes are reportedly increasing their girth by injecting their penises with hyaluronic acid or sticking clay in their underwear to artificially increase their measurements so they can compete in larger suits.
So far, there is no hard proof that this is happening, but WADA said that if athletes are enhancing their performances in this way, they’ll investigate.
“I’m not aware of the details of ski jumping – and how this can improve – but if anything was to come to the surface we would look at anything if it is actually doping related,” WADA director general Olivier Niggli said when he was asked about the rumors.
He continued, “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 until you mentioned.”
