An excerpt from Still Life with Stethoscope and Typewriter: Essays and Echoes of Narrative Medicine.

Every Olympic Games eventually produces its own mythology. Not the noble kind, ancient Greeks crowned in olive leaves, but the modern variety, where rumor, technology, desperation, and money form a cocktail best consumed at a safe distance.

The 2026 Winter Olympics in Milan have already delivered one such legend: the claim that elite ski jumpers were receiving penile-enlarging injections of hyaluronic acid to gain an aerodynamic advantage in flight.

Let us pause.

Not for dignity, there is none, but for admiration. Because if you are going to invent a rumor, it should be specific, anatomically detailed, and just plausible enough to force a response from the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA).

WADA, to its credit, did what modern institutions must do in the age of viral nonsense: It issued a sober statement denying the existence of evidence while leaving the door open to future investigation. The International Ski and Snowboard Federation dismissed the story as a “wild rumor,” which, notably, is not the same as calling it impossible. Science, after all, is never offended, only curious.

And curiosity is the problem.

Because while this particular claim appears unfounded, it fits neatly into a broader truth: Innovation in sport has begun to outrun both medical science and ethical restraint. When margins of victory shrink to millimeters and milliseconds, the human imagination becomes, shall we say, “larger” and entrepreneurial.

If not that, then what?

If ski jumpers are not enhancing their genitals with hyaluronic acid, what might athletes attempt next?

Consider the endurance athlete experimenting with gut microbiome manipulation, importing stool samples from genetically gifted strangers in hopes of extracting marginal gains in oxygen utilization. Or the sprinter pursuing gene expression timing, not altering DNA (that is still illegal), but nudging transcription windows through precisely timed sleep deprivation and light exposure to align peak neuromuscular activation, hormone surges, and fast-twitch muscle gene expression with the narrow minutes of competition, maximizing explosive performance without technically crossing the line into gene doping.

Swimmers? We have already seen controversies involving polyurethane suits that nearly erased the record books. The next frontier is subcutaneous fluid redistribution, shifting interstitial volume to subtly alter buoyancy. Legal? Perhaps. Wise? Ask the lymphatic system.

Figure skaters might chase proprioceptive enhancement, using off-label neuromodulators to sharpen joint awareness by a few percentage points, just enough to land a quadruple jump without the brain’s usual veto.

And then there is the ultimate temptation: cognitive doping. Not stimulants, we know those, but carefully titrated anxiolytics to quiet performance-limiting doubt. Not enough to dull reflexes. Just enough to silence the voice that says, “Do not fall off the balance beam.”

If this sounds far-fetched, remember: Every banned substance began as an unregulated idea.

The suit, the scan, and the surveillance state

Ski jumping offers a perfect metaphor for where sport, and society, now stands. The introduction of 3D suit scans was meant to curb traditional cheating: widened seams, lowered crotch measurements, millimeters of illicit fabric conspiring with gravity.

The irony is exquisite. To prevent manipulation, athletes must submit to increasingly invasive measurement, cataloging the body in exquisite digital detail. We have reached the point where anti-cheating infrastructure itself borders on the grotesque.

This is not about morality. It is about escalation.

When innovation outpaces understanding, regulation becomes reactionary. Medicine knows this pattern well. We see it with AI diagnostics, direct-to-consumer genetic testing, and wellness products that promise “optimization” without defining the endpoint.

Sport is simply more honest about it.

What this says about us

The real story here is not about ski jumpers or anatomy. It is about a global culture obsessed with winning without wisdom.

We celebrate innovation but neglect consequence. We reward outcomes while pretending the process does not matter. We build systems where “legal” substitutes for “ethical,” and “possible” stands in for “reasonable.”

The Olympic ideal was once about testing human limits. Now it is about gaming them.

And medicine is not immune. We chase efficiency metrics that outpace judgment. We deploy tools faster than we can study their second-order effects. We marvel at what can be done, then act surprised when trust erodes.

The penile-injection rumor is funny because it is ridiculous, but also because it feels uncomfortably plausible in a world where enhancement has become a moral gray zone rather than a line.

Still life, with needle and stopwatch

In my book “Still Life with Stethoscope and Typewriter: Essays and Echoes of Narrative Medicine,” I write about the danger of confusing progress with meaning. This episode belongs squarely in that frame.

A still life freezes a moment so we can study it. And here is what this moment shows us: A world where the human body is no longer a given, but a variable. A society that treats limits as flaws rather than guides. An arms race where innovation keeps asking “Can we?” long after we stopped asking “Should we?”

The Olympics, like medicine, function best when they remember why they exist. Not to perfect bodies, but to honor effort. Not to eliminate uncertainty, but to meet it honestly.

Because once we start engineering the silhouette instead of training the soul, we are no longer competing, we are compensating.

And no amount of aerodynamics will help us land that jump.

Arthur Lazarus is a former Doximity Fellow, a member of the editorial board of the American Association for Physician Leadership, and an adjunct professor of psychiatry at the Lewis Katz School of Medicine at Temple University in Philadelphia. He is the author of several books on narrative medicine and the fictional series Real Medicine, Unreal Stories. His latest book, a novel, is JAILBREAK: When Artificial Intelligence Breaks Medicine.