Winter Olympic athletes to be microchipped after crotch-enlarging cheating scandal

Winter Olympic ski jumpers will have their suits micropchipped after a suit-tampering scandal gripped the sport a year before the 2026 Games.

In a sport often decided by tiny margins, athletes and countries leave no stone unturned in their pursuit of gaining even the smallest of advantages.

But at last year’s World Championships, those efforts from the Norwegian team crossed the line after their coaches were found to have illegally manipulated suits to gain an unfair advantage.

In ski jumping, suits are strictly fitted to each athlete according to their size, but a leaked video showed the Norwegian team making changes to the crotch areas of their suits to make them bigger.

Those increased suit sizes provide an extra aerodynamic resistance for the athletes, increasing their lift, reducing their descent rate, and ultimately enabling them to fly further in the air.

The athletes involved, reigning Olympic champion Marius Lindvik and Johann Andre Forfang, denied any wrongdoing and escaped with only a three-month ban.

The three coaches involved, however, admitted to their part in the cheating scandal and were all slapped with 18-month bans.

Lindvik has now served his ban and returns to the Winter Olympics in Milano Cortina looking to defend his goal medal.

But the scandal has seen the sport’s governing body make a series of changes to try and clamp down on any potential future cheating.

Before ski jumping events, the International Ski Federation (FIS) and a doctor are now using improved 3-D measurements to evaluate athletes in their uniforms.

New suit designs will also make it harder to tamper with the arm and leg cuffs or lower the crotch to provide more aerodynamic resistance.

In addition, when suits pass control checkpoints before competition, tamper-proof microchips will be added to the suit to prevent manipulation, with scanners able to tell before and after the jump if the chips are all in place.

While officials hope these changes will crack down on cheating, some fear that athletes have already gone to new lengths to exploit marginal gains.

That’s after reports which previously claimed that male athletes were injecting hyaluronic acid into their genitals to increase the size of their manhood.

This would be down to inflate key body measurements produced in pre-season, which ultimately could allow the athlete the benefit of a larger suit with more aerodynamic resistance through the air.

In addition, cross-country skier Mika Vermeulen claimed several of his rivals are also cheating by filling their pants with ‘modelling clay’.

He told NRK: ‘People were constantly cheating. They stuffed tons of modeling clay into their underwear to achieve a bigger jump

‘This allows the ski jumper to cheat and gain more suit surface area, which gives an advantage in the air.

‘When I was first asked to take measurements, the older and more experienced jumpers came to me and said, ‘It is very important that you tape your penis down.

‘Because this will make your stride length one or two centimetres lower.’

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