Callum Jones
Ahead of the opening ceremony of the Winter Olympics, officials of the prestigious sporting event have introduced a surprising new microchipping rule that's bizarre to say the least.
While the big event to kick start the Milano Cortina games is being held at the San Siro on Friday (February 6), the competition itself actually got underway on Wednesday (February 4).
Many of the typical events are returning for the 2026 Olympic Winter Games, though ski jumping, for example, is seeing some sweeping changes due to 'penis gate'.
Bizarrely, there's a focus on the crotches of ski jumpers at the Olympics following a scandal that made headlines last year.
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German publication Bild reported earlier this month that ski jumpers were enlarging their genital area at the 2025 Nordic World Ski Championships in Norway by using substances such as hyaluronic acid.
To put it simply, athletes would want a larger crotch area so they could don a bigger ski jumping suit, which could generate more lift, leading to better results.
To combat that, sports stars will now have to go through advanced 3D body and suit measurements in the effort to prevent tampering of any kind.
Bruno Sassi, a spokesman for the international ski federation, FIS told the Associated Press: "There have been disqualifications in the past, many. It’s part of the sport. But there had never been that kind of a brazen attempt to not only bend the rules, but like downright do something ... to cheat the system in a way that it is very different from simply having a suit that is a tad too long or a tad too loose."
'Penis-gate' rocked the sport last year after Marius Lindvik and Johann André Forfang, from Norway, were banned for a period of three months.
Rune Velta, who's a former Norwegian ski jumper himself, has since taken over the running of the Norwegian team and is tasked with rebuilding reputation.
"It’s the hardest thing I’ve ever done," Velta told press. "We are building everything around the athletes from scratch. We started five months ago with zero and now we have a team around them to make them perform.”
Speaking of the new rules, Velta continued: "Acceptance for a kind of minor error and mistakes are really low. We needed this summer to understand the standards and to learn kind of the line of the control and execution of the rules."