Finland skier Remi Lindholm spent over an hour navigating the men’s Olympic 50km race at the Beijing Olympic Games on Sunday, and it resulted in a sensitive appendage needing to later be thawed out.
As reported by Reuters, organizers for the race initially delayed the start time of the race by an hour and shortened the course from 50km to 30km out of fear of frostbite as a bitter cold front moved in on Sunday. Despite these precautions, Lindholm still suffered a frozen penis by the end of the race, which was actually the second time this had happened to him.
“You can guess which body part was a little bit frozen when I finished (the men’s Olympic 50km race), Lindholm told Finnish media, loosely referring to a similar situation that happened last year in Ruka, Finland. “It was one of the worst competitions I’ve been in. It was just about battling through.”
He added that he initially didn’t notice the frozen body part at first, but the real issues came when it started to thaw out.
“When the body parts started to warm up after the finish, the pain was unbearable,” he added.
Lindholm’s strange predicament came right before the Beijing Winter Olympics wrapped up with their closing ceremony later Sunday evening. The games went off without any major disasters but were plagued by rising tensions in Europe over a potential Russian invasion of Ukraine, and by a doping scandal involving Russian figure skater Kamila Valieva.
Valieva was ultimately able to compete at the games despite registering a positive doping test in December, but the ruling set off Sha’Carri Richardson, the Texas sprinter who was unable to compete in the Olympic 100m in Tokyo after she tested positive for cannabis.
“Can we get a solid answer on the difference of her situation and mines?” Richardson tweeted after Valieva was clear to compete. “My mother died and I can’t run and was also favored to place top 3. The only difference I see is I’m a black young lady.”
