Somewhere out there, allegedly, somebody may own Diego Maradona’s fake penis.
Not a sentence I expected to write this week, but according to sports science writer James Witts, there were cases of the Argentine football icon using a plastic penis filled with clean urine to avoid returning a positive drug test.
Speaking on the Men’s Health Built For Life podcast, Witts – author of Dope: How Drugs Change Sport – explained that the device supposedly became something of a curiosity in Argentina.
‘There were certainly cases of Diego Maradona avoiding positive drug tests by filling up a plastic penis with clean urine and giving it to the drug testers.’
According to Witts, the item later ‘became a prized item in Argentina’ and was even ‘framed in a museum’ in Buenos Aires before being taken on tour.
As bizarre as the story sounds, it highlights a lesser-known side of anti-doping in sport. We tend to imagine performance-enhancing drugs as a world of sophisticated chemistry, secret laboratories and cutting-edge science. But some of the methods athletes have used to evade detection have been surprisingly low-tech.
When you think of doping, the mind probably goes to syringes, blood bags, shadowy doctors, maybe a cyclist climbing a mountain like he’s unlocked a cheat code.
What you probably don’t think of is a fake penis.
Yet, according to Witts, that’s exactly the sort of workaround that has appeared throughout the history of anti-doping.
‘There are so many cases,’ he told MH.
The idea is fairly simple. If a urine test is being supervised, an athlete uses a device that looks realistic enough to deliver a clean sample that isn’t actually theirs.
When asked if that meant using a fake penis to provide someone else’s urine, Witts confirmed: ‘Yeah. In the research of this book, I came across the Whizzinator.’
The Maradona story might be the most memorable example, but Witts explained that athletes have found all sorts of ways to stay ahead of testers over the years.
Some have simply avoided answering the door when testers arrived. Others have exploited timing loopholes. There have even been cases involving doppelgängers.
The absurdity of these stories is part of what makes them so fascinating. Anti-doping is often portrayed as a battle between increasingly sophisticated testing methods and increasingly sophisticated drugs. And sometimes it is.
But sport has always been a contest of ingenuity as much as athleticism.
Unfortunately, that ingenuity doesn’t always stay within the rules.
Careers, medals, contracts and legacies are on the line. When the stakes are that high, athletes can get creative. Sometimes that means microdosing. Sometimes it means blood transfusions.
And sometimes, apparently, it means bringing your own penis.
With almost 18 years in the health and fitness space as a personal trainer, nutritionist, breath coach and writer, Andrew has spent nearly half of his life exploring how to help people improve their bodies and minds.
As our fitness editor he prides himself on keeping Men’s Health at the forefront of reliable, relatable and credible fitness information, whether that’s through writing and testing thousands of workouts each year, taking deep dives into the science behind muscle building and fat loss or exploring the psychology of performance and recovery.
Whilst constantly updating his knowledge base with seminars and courses, Andrew is a lover of the practical as much as the theory and regularly puts his training to the test tackling everything from Crossfit and strongman competitions, to ultra marathons, to multiple 24 hour workout stints and (extremely unofficial) world record attempts.
You can find Andrew on Instagram at @theandrew.tracey, or simply hold up a sign for ‘free pizza’ and wait for him to appear.
