Crotch enhancements. Banned helmets. Qualifying manipulation claims. And Russian hacking.
Even before Friday’s opening ceremony at San Siro in Milan, the build-up to the Winter Olympics in Italy has provided its fill of controversies.
Athletes are always trying to find a competitive edge. This alleged attempt – dubbed “crotchgate” by some – is bizarre.
Why might ski jumpers be injecting an acid serum into their genitalia to artificially increase the size? It’s nothing to do with bedroom gymnastics in the Olympic Village.
Claims were put to the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) that it’s being done to enlarge the skin suit surface area around the crotch to give ski jumpers greater lift – to glide further in the pursuit of gold.
WADA director general Olivier Niggli said he was not aware of the claims on how it could improve performance.
But he added: “If anything was to come to the surface, we would look at anything if it is actually doping related. We don’t address other means of enhancing performance.”
Rules were tightened after Norwegians were caught adding stitching to the crotch area of their suits during the World Championships last year.
Helmet ban
A more scientific case of seeking aerodynamic advantage landed Team GB in a hearing in Milan with the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) on the eve of the opening ceremony.
The British Bobsleigh and Skeleton Association has been appealing to overturn a ban on new helmets that were found to have breached the competition rules because of an irregular shape, denying skeleton gold medal contender Matt Weston from wearing it.
He said while awaiting the CAS outcome: “This is a sport that is won by hundredths of a second, so for us as GB and the team we have around us, we’re constantly innovating from race week to race week.
“We try to push the boundaries and find those gains, this is just one of the parts of innovation we do as GB and I think we do it pretty well.”
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Now, having the best team of lawyers can be as essential as having the best coaches in sport.
The US launched legal challenges after skeleton racer Katie Uhlaender fell just short of qualifying for a sixth Olympics.
Fewer qualification ranking points became available after rivals Canada pulled four sliders from a race last month, reducing the status of the event.
The sport’s governing body recognised it could look like the event was manipulated but found no rules were broken.
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Cyberattacks thwarted
Russia has been trying for a decade to return to the Olympics – losing sport’s court battles.
First banned for running a state-sponsored doping programme at the 2014 Sochi Olympics, the full-scale invasion of Ukraine extended its exclusion from the biggest sports extravaganza as a team under the Russian flag and anthem.
Russians were accused of trying to undermine those Games through online disinformation and hacking attempts.
Now the Italian government says it has thwarted cyberattacks on Olympic websites and hotels in one of the games hubs at Cortina d’Ampezzo.
