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Hyaluronic acid occurs naturally in the human body. It’s commonly used as a dermal filler for lips and for combating wrinkles, and has legitimate orthopaedic uses. A quick check of the World Anti-Doping Agency’s Prohibited List confirms the substance isn’t banned for athletes – in or out of competition.
Which is where any investigation to determine whether ski-jumpers are contravening any rules – if indeed they are injecting hyaluronic acid into their penises in an attempt to manipulate aerodynamics and flight mechanics, as per the unsubstantiated rumours circulating at the start of the Winter Olympics – must begin.
Ski jumpers need all the help they can get to get more hang time.Credit: AP
The theory is that by injecting the viscous substance, valued for its ability to retain water and add volume, into penile tissue, male jumpers sought to alter their bodily dimensions by bulging the crotch downwards – permitting them to wear bigger ski suits with a greater surface area and, therefore, greater aerodynamic lift.
Kind of like an A380 wing offers more lift than the wing of a Cessna. In a sport where millimetres are obsessed over, athletes and engineers scrutinise any variable that could extract an advantage, including boot angles, ski length, fabric porosity and in-flight posture.
International rules already police suit thickness and fit with microscopic and forensic zeal, sometimes even demanding re-measuring of competitors at the top of the ski jump. Against that backdrop, regulators are now asked – uncomfortably – to weigh up whether anatomical modification could fall under the same umbrella of illicit performance enhancement.
All skiers’ suits must, under the International Ski and Snowboard Federation’s Specifications for Competition Equipment, be made of the same five-layer laminated fabric between 4mm and 6mm thick. Athletes’ suits are typically measured with a 3D scanner, and the regulations state that the maximum tolerance in the suit is 20mm larger than the athlete’s body circumference at any point – except in certain areas including parts of the crotch, where that tolerance is doubled.
LetchCredit:
So far, nobody has produced public evidence showing that such injections were administered to any athlete, let alone that they conferred a demonstrable advantage.
Whether any localised change in the external dimensions of an appendage would meaningfully affect lift or drag, compared with the dominant factors – including ski surface area, body angle, wind conditions, and technique – is one for the aerospace engineers.
So I’m advised by the experts that when a ski jumper flies after take-off, they position their body nearly horizontal and spread the skis to create a V-shape – essentially a Concorde-like delta wing.
But there’s a massive area between the skier’s legs – compared to someone wearing a wingsuit – that decreases the wing platform area. Which results in decreased lift, and increased drag.
The only way to increase lift force is to increase velocity at take-off, or increase platform area. Greater platform area equals greater lift, which equals a longer flight at a greater distance. Bulge the crotch, and you have a bigger platform area.
Issues of the crotch are important to the federation. In 2016, it changed suit regulations, mandating that a non-stretchable strap be sewn inside a skier’s suit above the waistline, preventing the skier stretching the suit down below the crotch to improve aerodynamics. Those rules, however, don’t account for the alteration of body measurements.
As far as the aerospace experts are concerned, the crotch is the perfect place to increase area anywhere on the ski jumper, as it pulls the wing root lower. All air that passes through the gap between the legs is wasted, creating no lift but generating vortices which increases drag. A significant engorgement in the trouser department could increase aerodynamic lift, and that extrapolates out to a flight distance increase measured in metres.
The seriousness of the federation’s – and WADA’s – stated interest underscores how relentlessly competitive and technologically sensitive ski jumping has become. Whether this ends as a cautionary tale or an amusing footnote in the history of anti-doping regulation is for the crystal ball aficionados.
But I can tell you now that a male ski jumper injecting his nether regions to enhance his “girth” is highly unlikely to constitute doping.
Under WADA’s World Anti-Doping Code, “doping” is defined as the occurrence of one or more of the prescribed anti-doping rule violations outlined in articles 2.1 through 2.11. Rather than a single act, doping encompasses multiple prohibited behaviours.
Those violations include presence of prohibited substances or metabolites in an athlete’s sample; use or attempted use of banned substances or methods; evading, refusing, or failing to submit to sample collection; whereabouts failures; tampering with doping control procedures; possession of prohibited substances or methods; trafficking or attempted trafficking; administration of outlawed substances to athletes; complicity; and a prohibited association with sanctioned personnel.
Complex stuff. Some substances are banned at all times, while others are prohibited only during competition periods.
But as noted already, hyaluronic acid isn’t listed as banned.
However, WADA’s Prohibited List also states that intravenous infusions or injections, of more than a total of 100 millilitres per 12-hour period – of any substance, banned or otherwise – constitutes doping except where legitimately received in the course of hospital treatments and clinical diagnostic investigation.
According to my “extensive” desktop research, it would be wildly uncommon for a fresh new set of duck lips to require the administration of even 5 millilitres of hyaluronic acid. On those numbers, it’s probably unlikely an enhanced old fella would require more than 100 millilitres of the stuff.
Greater than 100 millilitres would have a dramatic, and maybe medically dangerous, anatomical effect that would last for 18 months.
This isn’t doping. It’s hard to play along with the charade that it could be. What this is though – theoretically, given there’s no evidence – is an instance of the rules of a sport failing to keep up with the innovation and deviousness of those searching for even the most fractional edge.
Elite sport has always existed in the uncomfortable chasm between human ingenuity and dishonesty. Where there are rules, there will be those who push against them, and those who shatter them entirely.
Australian sport knows this story. Ben Lexcen’s winged keel, which at least greatly helped Australia II to end 132 years of American dominance in the America’s Cup in 1983, remains one of our most celebrated sporting innovations.
Lexcen’s keel design featured short wings extending from the bottom of the keel, dramatically improving the yacht’s ability to point into the wind and reduce drag.
It was so revolutionary that Dennis Conner and his vanquished US teammates immediately cried foul. But the winged keel was legal. Lexcen had identified an advantage within the existing rules, and he is rightly lionised for it. The winged keel was ingenious in knowing the rules and then working within the boundaries of those rules. Sport, at its finest.
So start me again – besides the obvious health concerns, why exactly would it be so wrong for a ski jumper to maximise the size of their old fella?
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