Chaos, condoms and cheating admissions: These are the wildest 2026 Winter Olympics scandals

As the 2026 Winter Olympics wrap up this weekend, the Games will be remembered not just for record-breaking runs and tear-soaked podiums, but for a string of scandals that veered from ridiculous to genuinely jaw-dropping.

Yes, the world’s best winter athletes delivered the usual spectacle across niche sports we only remember every four years. But alongside the triumphs and heartbreaks came a side order of chaos: Broken medals, bedroom shortages, cheating rows and political flashpoints.

Here are the scandals that defined the Milan-Cortina Games, for all the wrong reasons.

The Olympic Village condom shortage

Will Vishwaguru distribute 1,000,000 condoms to athletes if it hosts the Olympics in 2036?

Around 300,000 condoms have been distributed to athletes in the Paris Olympics. Tinder, Bumble matches are on record numbers. pic.twitter.com/V6FDYp1uHI

— Lord Immy Kant (@KantInEastt) July 30, 2024

Forget medal tables, the Olympic Village apparently turned into a two-week hookup marathon. Organisers reportedly supplied 10,000 condoms for roughly 2,800 residents at the start of the Games, only for stocks to vanish within three days.

Officials confirmed supplies were “temporarily depleted due to higher-than-anticipated demand” before being urgently restocked. With Valentine’s Day falling mid-Olympics, athletes clearly weren’t just competing on the slopes.

The bronze medal confession nobody expected

NRK

Norwegian biathlete Sturla Holm Lægreid should have been celebrating after taking bronze in the 20km race. Instead, he stunned people by using his post-race interview to confess he’d cheated on his partner three months earlier.

“I had a gold medal in life,” he said tearfully, explaining he’d only recently told her. The emotional overshare instantly became one of the Games’ most surreal podium-adjacent moments.

The medals that literally fell apart

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Athletes train for decades for Olympic hardware, not for it to disintegrate on contact. Early medal winners discovered the 2026 designs were alarmingly fragile, with clasps failing and components snapping.

American skier Breezy Johnson saw her gold break apart mid-celebration, while New Zealand snowboarder Zoi Sadowski-Synnott knocked her silver loose after tapping it against her board.

The International Olympic Committee faced instant embarrassment as images of broken medals spread online.

The ski jumping “crotch enhancement” rumours

One of the strangest rumours of the Games claimed male ski jumpers were undergoing hyaluronic acid injections to increase genital surface area, supposedly for aerodynamic gain.

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An Italian cosmetic surgeon bragged in interviews about performing thousands of such procedures, including on a ski jumper, but refused to confirm any Olympic involvement. Both the International Ski and Snowboard Federation and the World Anti-Doping Agency dismissed the story as unproven, though not before it went wildly viral.

The husky that tried to join the race

Eurosport

In what might be the internet’s favourite Olympic moment, a stray husky ran onto the course during a women’s team sprint cross-country event and happily chased the skiers to the finish.

Sadly for fans, the canine cameo happened in qualifying rather than a final, meaning the unofficial competitor missed out on any medal, broken or otherwise. Social media quickly declared it the true robbed champion of 2026.

Curling’s shocking cheating row

CBS

Curling is supposed to be the polite, wholesome corner of the Winter Olympics, until this year. Canada’s Marc Kennedy was accused by Sweden’s Oscar Eriksson of illegally touching a stone after release, a violation known as “double-touching”.

Kennedy furiously denied it during the match, shouting an expletive-laden response across the ice. The spat shattered curling’s gentle image and became one of the Games’ most replayed confrontations.

A convicted fraudster winning Olympic gold

French biathlete Julia Simon claimed gold in both the women’s 15km and mixed relay, despite a recent conviction for credit-card fraud involving teammate Justine Braisaz-Bouchet.

Simon had previously denied wrongdoing before admitting the offence in court months before the Olympics. Her victories reignited debate over whether athletes with criminal convictions should be competing at the highest level.

Political protests and presidential clapbacks

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Several athletes used the Olympic stage to spotlight conflicts at home. Ukrainian skeleton racer Vladyslav Heraskevychwas removed from competition after wearing a helmet honouring sports figures killed in Russia’s war on Ukraine.

Meanwhile American freestyle skier Hunter Hess spoke about “mixed emotions” representing the U.S. under the second Trump administration, prompting a social-media insult from Donald Trump calling him a “loser”.

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Featured image credit: BBC