The 2026 Winter Olympic Games have their opening ceremony this Friday, February 6th, at the San Siro Stadium, in Milan, but they are already surrounded by some controversies, one of which is quite bizarre and relates to the fact that some athletes injected an acidic serum into their genitals to increase the size of that area of the body.
Already nicknamed “groin scandal”this is a way for athletes to gain some competitive advantage. According to the German newspaper Bild, the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) received some complaints about this situation, which stated that the objective of increasing the volume in the groin area allows ski jumpers to increase the support area of their body and, in this way, be able to glide for longer and allow longer jumps.
Olivier Niggli, director general of WADA, has since said that he is unaware that the substance in question improves the performance of athletes, but made sure that “everything related to doping” will be investigated, but ruled out investigating “other means of improving sporting performance”.
The rules were reinforced by the international federation after, at the 2025 World Championships, it was discovered that Norwegian skiers were reinforcing the seams of their equipment in the groin area to gain an advantage when jumping.
However, the controversies do not end there. On Thursday, the day before the opening ceremony, The British Bobsleigh and Skeleton Federation filed an appeal with the Court of Arbitration for Sport (TAD) in an attempt to overturn the ban on the use by athlete Matt Weston, one of the favorites for the skeleton gold medal, of a new helmet that allegedly violates competition rules due to its shape.
“This is a sport where you win by hundredths of a second, which is why Great Britain is always innovating. We try to push the limits, finding advantages and this is just one of the aspects of the innovation we develop”, explained Matt Watson before the hearing at TAD, in Milan. The British are still waiting for the result of the court’s final decision.
Cyber attacks
The 2026 Winter Olympic Games, which will take place until February 22 in Milan and Cortina, will not have the participation of Russia, which faces a ten-year suspension due to a doping controversy sponsored by the Kremlin at the Sochi Games in 2014, but also due to the invasion of Ukraine.
But that doesn’t mean the Russians have given up on influencing the Milan-Cortina Games, as the Italian government announced that it has blocked cyber attacks against the competition’s official websites, hotels and even one of the venues where the competitions will take place, in Cortina d’Ampezzo. In addition to this, there are also reports of attempts at disinformation through social media.
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