Jamaican-born Canadian Ben Johnson crosses the finish line to win the 100m final at the 1988 at Seoul Olympics. He was banned for two years in Seoul after testing positive for the steroid stanolozol shortly after winning the 100m. He made a comeback in 1992 at the Barcelona Olympics, only to test positive again a year later, this time for testosterone, incurring a life-time ban. Photo by ROMEO GACAD /AFP/Getty Images Article content
Perhaps you saw the story about the ski jumpers who were said to be cheating by injecting a foreign substance into their, how to say this delicately, packages.
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Or, as one U.K. headline bluntly put it, “Why Olympians are injecting acid into their PENIS to gain a competitive advantage”.
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To be clear, the headline really did render that one word in all-caps.
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As is often the case with the modern viral story, the most sensational bits are rather thinly reported. The German publication that broke the allegations cited background chatter that certain jumpers had used substances such as hyaluronic acid to “temporarily enlarge” the crotch area during preseason testing, when all athletes have precise body measurements taken. An artificially enlarged crotch, so to speak, would then allow the jumper to wear a suit — which is supposed to be skintight — with a little extra fabric in the nether regions, which would provide extra lift while soaring through the air.
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Picture a base jumper, or a flying squirrel. A ski jumper who could get just the tiniest boost from a sail-like effect in the undercarriage could jump that much further.
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Does all this sound a bit ridiculous? Yes, especially since that original German report also suggests the athletes — none of whom are identified, even by nationality — might be putting the acid in a silicone sleeve worn during the measurement process, as opposed to a literal, presumably quite painful, injection. It did allow various publications to use “penis-gate” in headlines, though.
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And yet, the story does have the ring of plausibility for one simple reason: as long as there have been Olympics, there have been stories of cheaters.
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Three-time Olympic gold medalist Marion Jones speaks to the media outside a United States federal courthouse October 5, 2007 in White Plains, NY. Jones pleaded guilty to charges in connection with steroid use. Photo by Hiroko Masuike /Getty Images Article content
Some of them you know: sprinters like Ben Johnson and Marion Jones, countless Russians due to that country’s state-sponsored doping scheme at Sochi 2014, plus judging scandals in boxing and skating and, once, even an attack on a figure-skating competitor with a telescoping metal baton.
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But there are others. And it started early. At the 1896 Olympics in Athens, a Greek athlete named Spyridon Belokas won the bronze medal in the marathon, only to later admit that he took a ride in a carriage to cover some of the distance. Resourceful!
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Just a few years later, at St. Louis 1904, American Fred Lorz suffered cramps at around the 15-kilometre mark and took himself out of the race. He got a lift back to the stadium, but the car broke down. When he realized he was near the 30-kilometre mark of the race, he resumed running and crossed the finish line first.
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The trickery was discovered, though, and the gold medal went to American Thomas Hicks, whose coaches had plied him with egg whites, brandy and strychnine — yes, the poison — as there were no rules against the use of stimulants at the time.
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One of the Olympic events with multiple cheating scandals is, oddly, modern pentathlon, which requires athletes to compete across five disciplines: running, swimming, fencing, shooting and equestrian show jumping. (Really.) At Rome 1960, the Tunisian three-man team was spectacularly poor at almost all of it, with one of them almost drowning in the pool. But they did have a good fencer, and they tried to pass him off as three different guys, hoping the mask would fool observers. (It did not.)
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Eight years later, Swedish modern pentathlete Hans-Gunnar Liljenwall was disqualified for failing a drug test because he drank two beers before the shooting portion of the event. This seems unwise in any shooting endeavour, if we’re being honest. And, eight years after that, Soviet modern pentathlete Boris Onishchenko was disqualified from the Montreal games when it was discovered that his épée was rigged with a button that allowed him to register points without actually striking his opponent. Even more resourceful!
