Finnish skier admits his penis froze ‘a little’ during a cross-country skiing event in Beijing Olympic Games
Remi Lindholm of Team Finland competes during the Men’s Cross-Country Skiing 50km Mass Start Free on Day 15 of the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics at The National Cross-Country Skiing Centre on February 19, 2022 in Zhangjiakou, China. (Lars Baron/Getty Images)
Finnish skier Remi Lindholm suffered some hard luck at the Beijing Olympics.
His penis was “a little bit frozen” by the time he finished the men’s Olympic 50km race, he told Reuters after coming in 28th.
The mass start race had been delayed by an hour and shortened by 20 km because of the frigid cold. Clad in thin suits and underlayers, and minimal head gear, the skiers were barely protected from the elements, and the competition was deemed “brutal.”
“You can guess which body part was a little bit frozen when I finished,” Lindholm told Finnish media, according to Reuters. “It was one of the worst competitions I’ve been in. It was just about battling through.”
It took about an hour and a quarter for Lindholm to traverse the course in howling, freezing winds, Reuters said. After completing the race, Lindholm slapped a heat pack on what he said was an excruciatingly sensitive appendage — and not in a good way.
“When the body parts started to warm up after the finish, the pain was unbearable,” Lindholm said. Strange as it sounds, even amid the unusually high drama of the Beijing Games, it’s not the first time this has happened. Last year, too, a Norwegian skier recounted suffering a similar setback.
“The worst I’ve been through? It was in Finland once,” World Championship silver medalist Calle Halfvarsson told Finnish outlet Aftonbladet in January 2021. “Then it was really cold, and I did not freeze on fingers or feet but I froze on another thing.”
Speaking to the sports outlet last year, Halfvarsson said he almost quit the competition, which he didn’t name.
“That was the worst thing I’ve been through,” Halfvarsson said, adding that he had barely made it to the finish line. “Then I thought about whether I should stop skiing. It was unbelievably cold.”
In Beijing, Metallica fan Lindholm managed to stay in the middle of the 60-skier pack in the race, finishing four minutes after the medal winners but 16 minutes ahead of those at the end, according to Rolling Stone.
He was still able to be on hand for his country’s gold medal in hockey as well as the Olympics closing ceremony on Sunday, Rolling Stone noted.
