Weird and wonderful stories from the Winter OlympicsImage source, EPAImage caption, A dog joined in at the Olympic women’s cross-country skiingByKatie FalkinghamBBC Sport senior journalist in LivignoPublished48 minutes agoThe Olympics. There’s nothing quite like it.The world’s greatest sporting showcase – and a hub of weird and wonderful stories.Think the Australian breakdancer, the ‘Muffin Man’ and the random guy in his swimming trunks at Paris 2024. The robots at Beijing 2022. The green diving pool at Rio 2016.The Games always throws up the unexpected – and the Milan-Cortina Winter Olympics has been no different.Here are just some of the stories we didn’t think we would be telling from over the past few weeks.Penis injections in ski jumping?Media caption, Wada caught off guard by penis injections questionThe Olympics had not even got under way when the World Anti-Doping Agency (Wada) responded to claims that male ski jumpers were injecting their penises in a bid to improve sporting performance.
German newspaper Bild revealed that jumpers were injecting their genitals with hyaluronic acid – which is not banned in sport – to increase their size before being measured for their suits.
The bigger the surface area of the suits, the more flight in the air.
Asked about the claims, Wada director general Olivier Niggli reported: “If anything was to come to the surface, we would look at it and see if it is doping related.”
International Ski and Snowboard Federation (FIS) communications director Bruno Sassi told BBC Sport: “There has never been any indication, let alone evidence, that any competitor has ever made use of a hyaluronic acid injection to attempt to gain a competitive advantage.”
That wasn’t the end of the headlines for ski jumping either. Later in the Games, Austria’s Daniel Tschofenig was disqualified from the men’s large hill individual event for wearing oversized boots – that were just four millimetres larger than the rules permitted.
