As the 2026 Olympic Winter Games begin today, news articles are swelling with juicy claims that male ski jumpers have injected their penises with fillers to gain a flight advantage.
As the rumor goes, having a bigger bulge on a required 3D body scan taken in the pre-season could earn jumpers extra centimeters of material in their jumpsuits—and a suit’s larger nether regions provide more surface area to glide to the gold. Even a small increase can make a satisfying difference in this sport. A 2025 simulation-based study published in the journal Frontiers in Sports and Active Living suggested that every 2 cm of extra fabric in a ski jumpsuit could increase drag by about 4 percent and increase lift by about 5 percent. On a jump, that extra 2 cm of fabric amounts to an extra 5.8 meters, the simulations found.
Elite ski jumpers are aware of the advantage and have already crotch-rocketed to scandal with related schemes. Last year, two Norwegian Olympic medalists, Marius Lindvik and Johann Andre Forfang, and three of their team officials were charged with cheating after an anonymous video showed the head coach and suit technician illegally restitching the crotch area of the two jumpers’ suits to make them larger. The jumpers received a three-month suspension, while the head coach, an assistant coach, and the technician faced a harsher 18-month ban.
Injections are alleged to be a new, more drastic strategy. Rumors that jumpers were internally padding their peckers first came to light in January, when German newspaper Bild reported that there were “whispers” of jumpers using hyaluronic acid or possibly paraffin injections.
Bild quoted Dr. Kamran Karim, a specialist at Maria-Hilf Hospital in Krefeld, Germany, as saying (translated): “There is the possibility of obtaining a temporary, optical thickening of the penis with the injection of paraffin or hyaluronic acid. … Such an injection, however, is not medically indicated and involves risks.”
On Thursday, the injection claims sprang up again at a press conference in which journalists asked officials of the World Anti-Doping Agency about the claims. The agency’s director general said they were not aware of any claims and that non-doping means of enhancing performance are not in their purview. But according to the BBC, WADA President Witold Banka, who is from Poland, was “clearly entertained” by the questions, responding: “Ski jumping is very popular in Poland, so I promise you I’m going to look at it.”