• Bild claims acid injections used to alter jumpers’ suits

• ‘If anything was to come to the surface we’d look at it’

During its 26-year history the World Anti-Doping Agency has faced thousands of questions about athletes using illicit substances. Thursday, however, surely marked the first time it was asked whether ski jumpers were injecting their penises with hyaluronic acid in order to fly further.

The Wada president Witold ­Banka’s reaction? “Ski jumping is very popular in Poland [Banka’s home country] so I promise you I’m going to look at it,” he said, with a wry smile.

Organisers are hoping for a celebration of winter sport at Milano Cortina 2026 but tensions will not be far from the surface

A short stroll from where the grandees of the International Olympic Committee are staying in Milan sits the Museum of Illusions – a place devoted to magic and misdirection. Mirrors distort. Perspectives shift. And nothing is quite what it seems. It is an apposite metaphor for these Winter Olympics, which officially open in Italy on Friday.

Over the following 16 days, the world will be enraptured by the dazzle and spin of these Games: downhill skiers bombing down mountains at 95mph, snowboarders twirling like gyroscopes, the balletic grace of the world’s best skaters. But in Milano Cortina a fresh cold war is also brewing amid global political chaos.

• Skeleton crew’s helmets ruled ineligible on eve of Games

• Great Britain appeal to court of arbitration for sport

Great Britain’s best hopes of gold at these Winter Olympics have suffered a setback after skeleton’s governing body banned its new aerodynamic helmets for being the wrong shape.

Team GB’s Matt Weston and Marcus Wyatt have dominated skeleton all season, winning all seven of the World Cup races between them, and are strong favourites to win gold and silver in Milan.

• Kirsty Coventry: ‘Keep sport a neutral ground’

• Ukraine sports minister hits out at Fifa president

The International Olympic Committee president, Kirsty Coventry, has given her clearest signal yet that Russia could be back for the 2028 Los Angeles Games.

A day after the Fifa president, Gianni Infantino, said he wanted Russia reinstated to international football, Coventry used her opening address to the 145th IOC congress in Milan to argue that all athletes should be allowed to compete in sport – regardless of their government’s behaviour.

Team GB’s world champion will face off against China’s Eileen Gu for gold in Milano Cortina having conquered her fear of flying high above a 22-foot wall of ice

As part of Zoe Atkin’s degree at Stanford University she is learning how the brain conquers fear. The Team GB freestyle skier is about to put theory into practice in one of the most dangerous – and dazzling – sports at the Winter Olympics. “What we do is pretty risky,” she says. “When a regular person watches, they’re like, ‘Oh my god, these guys are crazy. What are they doing?’”

No wonder, given her sport involves skiing down a 22-foot wall of ice before twisting and spinning her body high into the sky and landing back on the wall. Then repeating the daredevilry five more times in quick succession.

• ICE agents will be in Milan for opening ceremony

• LA Games chair named in new batch of Epstein files

The International Olympic Committee has admitted that it is “distracting and sad” that the buildup to the Winter Olympics has been dominated by the deployment of ICE agents to Milan-Cortina and the appearance of the Los Angeles 2028 chair, Casey Wasserman, in the Epstein files. However Kirsty Coventry, the IOC president, insisted that once the Games begin on Friday, their “magic and spirit” would take over.

Coventry refused to comment directly on the protests in Milan against immigration and customs enforcement agents and said she hadn’t spoken to Wasserman, who has apologised for flirty emails sent to Ghislaine Maxwell in 2003 when he was married, which only surfaced on Friday.