Olympic Cheating Has Reached Astounding New Heights

Everyone stop what you’re doing. There’s a new cheating scandal at the Olympics and it demands our immediate attention. Believe me: There’s a ton of work I have to do at my actual job right now, but I’m putting all of it on hold because I just came across a brazen and highly technical new form of doping that has transformed my entire worldview on what “cheating” means. Frankly, it’s eroded my confidence in us ever having fair competitions of any kind ever again.

Downhill skiers are injecting acid into their penises.

I, for one, am outraged. Not because it’s cheating, but because never in a hundred years would I have thought to write a headline this funny. “‘Penis injection’ claims in Winter Olympics ski jumping investigated by Wada.” It’s beautiful. It’s like poetry. You could give infinite monkeys infinite typewriters and they’d sooner write Shakespeare than anything this good. (I believe this is known as the “Infinite Penis Theorem.”)

Tremendous hat tip to The Guardian for what is my current favorite piece of reporting ever written. Which, in case you somehow glossed over it, details how ski jumpers are modifying their doinks to gain a competitive advantage. The sport of ski jumping. A sport that is, apparently, taken seriously enough in some parts of the world that athletes are resorting to getting their wooners jammed full of paraffin wax or hyaluronic acid.

My thoughtful, measured response is: Whaaaaaaaaaaaa?

During its 26-year history, the World Anti-Doping Agency has faced thousands of questions about athletes using illicit substances. Thursday, however, surely marked the first time it was asked whether ski jumpers were injecting their penises with hyaluronic acid in order to fly further. The Wada president Witold Banka’s reaction? “Ski jumping is very popular in Poland [Banka’s home country] so I promise you I’m going to look at it,” he said, with a wry smile.

A wry smile indeed, Mr. Banka. I’ve got something you can promise to look at right here, if you know what I mean *wink* (I’m pointing at my empty penis.)

As crazy as it sounds, there are broader concerns surrounding this issue – which has been dubbed “Penisgate” – after they were first reported by the German newspaper Bild.

Which has been dubbed ‘Penisgate.’ I mean, look, we all know adding -gate as a suffix doesn’t mean anything. It’s honestly one of my pet peeves that scandals are just called “Something-gate” when the only reason that caught on was Watergate, which was the name of the building. But I’m willing to make an exception here because Watergate was, as far as I know, not about a bunch of ex-CIA dudes jamming stolen documents into their peendongs. If it were, can you imagine how much wilder the movie version of “All the President’s Men” would be?

The next few paragraphs outline a few cases where jumpers have already been suspended, presumably by the prudes at Wada and their tiny acid-free rods. Then we get hit with this:

One study in the scientific journal Frontiers found that every 2cm in suit size circumference reduced drag by 4% and increased lift by 5%. It said that a 2cm change in the suits was equivalent to an extra 5.8 metres in jump length.

Here are all the joke pitches I came up with as a response:

• Frontiers: the official scientific journal of size queens everywhere.
• Leave it to a scientific journal to prove what women have known for centuries.
• Like they always say, it’s not the size of the suit circumference that counts, it’s how you use it.
• In this case, I guess the suits are both growers AND showers!

Any good? I’ll keep working on them. What’s next?

However Bild has now claimed that jumpers have switched to other methods to game the system when they are measured for their suits, data for which is taken by a 3D scanner from the lowest point of their genitals. They include injecting acid into their penises or putting clay in their underwear to make their measurements temporarily bigger and therefore their suits looser for when they compete.

… sorry. I just need a minute. I printed these two sentences out and taped them up on my wall to study them more clearly. It’s been tough, but I finally reached a conclusion: this is the craziest fucking idea I’ve ever heard.

You’re telling me that these suits are engineered SO specifically that ski jumpers have started jabbing their Eddie the Eagles full of anti-aging skincare serum just to get 2cm of extra fabric that’ll allow them to catch slightly more air en route to longer jumps? This is madness. We have, as an Olympic-watching society, lost the plot.

Is this level of specificity and regulation really good for the sport? Any sport? I would so much rather just let people cheat at this point. Wear a wingsuit up there, for Christ’s sake. Just don’t risk the long-term health of your Olympic podium to gain an edge. It’s all funny headlines and pithy quips until your penis explodes mid-jump and you collapse into a heap on a Predazzo mountain.

Penis injection.