Football's answer to penis injections: How Maradona tried to fool the authorities with a rubber appendage

Martin Macdonald

• 8 Feb 2026 02:45 CST
• 6 min read

Analysis

The 2026 Winter Olympics officially commenced on 6 February, with nations from around the world set to compete for those gold, silver and bronze medals.

We are only a day or so into the festivities, and the news cycle has not been dominated by an event or the opening ceremony but rather...penis injections.

Just a few days before the competition started, German newspaper Bild reported that men's ski-jump athletes had been injecting their penises with "acid" in order to enlarge them. Apparently, an enlarged penis allows the jumper to travel further.

The bigger the length or surface area of a jumper's body, the more chance they have of going further. You'd think that extra material worn by the jumper would achieve this, but competitors are measured before each season to combat this workaround.

This guy broke the world record for the longest ski jump…pic.twitter.com/vRFDurftBC

— Epic Clip Vault (@EpicClipVault) January 29, 2026

Bild says: "Before the season, each jumper was measured with a 3-D scanner and the step measurement was determined, which starts at the lowest point in the genital area. This value is taken for the season as the basis for the suit. So if you succeed in moving this point down, you automatically get more grip surface - which brings buoyancy advantages.

"For a few millimetres of fabric, there are even jumpers who have already used hyaluronic acid to 'inject' their penis before measuring."

Competitors are effectively temporarily increasing their penis size before that 3-D scan in order to gain more material and surface area to aid their jump.

FIS equipment controller Mathias Hafele said: “I can rule out any attempts to enlarge the genitals using visible aids. Medical personnel are present during the measurements and check very carefully.”

That doesn't mean they can detect the acid injections, however.

Maradona's fake penis

What does all the above have to do with football, you ask? Well, it evokes memories of the legendary figure of Diego Maradona and how he apparently dodged drug tests for years using a fake penis.

Maradona's issues with drugs, cocaine in particular, are well-documented and the drama of his personal life away from the pitch is only matched by his brilliance on it.

While at Napoli, his drink and drug binges became legendary and the club hierarchy reportedly turned a blind eye to his exploits due to the seismic impact he was having on the club.

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In 1991 he was eventually banned from football for 15 months after testing positive for cocaine.

However, he allegedly went years without getting caught thanks to that fake penis and urine provided by a team-mate. The former Napoli president, Corrado Ferlaino, would even admit the plastic penis story was correct years later.

Let's let World Soccer journalist Jonathan Wilson explain, via the 'It Was What It Was' podcast:

"17 March, 1991, after a game against Bari, Maradona was selected for the random drugs test.

"Now previously they managed to protect him. He hadn't been selected for these tests before. There had been times when he'd been selected but he had prior warning of it and so what he'd do, he had a like a plastic penis that he could ,with a bladder underneath that he'd fill with somebody else's urine, pop that in his tracksuit bottoms and yeah he could con the testers by squirting that clean sample into a specimen jar.

"Now, this fake penis, this is a great story. When we're incredibly wealthy and successful, we should do a spin-off series on the search for Maradona's fake penis. This fake penis was held in the museum in Buenos Aires for several years. Then in December 2003, they took it on a nationwide tour, and it went missing. So somewhere in the Pampas...

"Somebody on their mantelpiece or whatever has got the fake penis of Diego Maradona. I really want to track that down."

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