Around the 74th Four Hills Tournament, the cheating debate in ski jumping continued to simmer. Are the athletes even cheating by manipulating the size of their genitals? FIS material director Matthias Hafele comments on the speculation.
Background: If individual ski jumpers were able to temporarily enlarge their penises using mechanical aids, such as foam, or even by injecting hyaluronic acid, this would in theory give them an advantage when measuring the step size and thus the suit area.
The result would be more buoyancy and therefore more jumps.
“Bild” reports that on the sidelines of the Four Hills Tournament there were whispers behind the scenes about corresponding practices. Individual nations would therefore advocate that the FIS carry out further body scans before the Olympic Games in order to correct possible errors in the measurements at the start of the season.
The World Ski Association probably doesn’t want to grant this. “There are currently no plans for further measurement. But we are already working in the background on methods to improve the difficult topic,” Hafele told the tabloid.
Ski jumping: The cheating debate remains omnipresent – even at the Four Hills Tournament
The Austrian ex-ski jumper emphasized: “I can rule out that attempts are being made to enlarge the genitals using visible aids. Medical staff are present during the measurement and they check very carefully.”
Video: Prevc defies the Teufelsbakken Bergisel
One thing is clear: Even after the big bang surrounding the Norwegians’ manipulated jumpsuits at the last World Cup, the tendency to exhaust the rules and possibly break them is still far from a thing of the past in ski jumping.
Most recently, the most prominent culprit was the Slovenian Timi Zajc, who jumped twice at the Four Hills Tournament with an irregular suit, was disqualified each time and then excluded from further competition with the newly introduced red card.