Throughout history, cheating has been glorified as an easy way to success. None more so in the high stakes world of professional sports. Whether it be sneaky deals on the side or out and out rigging a deck of cards, cheating has existed as long as sports have been around. Even the King himself, Richard Petty, once quipped that, "If you ain't cheatin you ain't tryin." This adage has been taken to heart in nearly every sport, ranging from the NBA to the WSOP.
Tim Donaghy. Ben Johnson. The 1919 Black Sox. Barry Bonds. The list goes on and on. Yet cheating has continued, used as a shortcut or an advantage. And the cheating is not simply limited to the lower levels of sports, as the list of proven cheaters include the "best and the brightest" of every sports, ranging from baseball's career home run leader, Olympic gold medalists, and NBA referees. Movies have been made, glorifying cheating as a shortcut to success and riches, including 8 Men Out and Rounders.
A few have gone above and beyond the norm for cheating, giving a bad name to cheaters, scoundrels, and scam artists everywhere. So without further ado, here's a few of the most insane sports scams ever pulled off.
Spain rigs the Paralympics
To put this scam into perspective, the Paralympics are just like the Olympics. Except for people with disabilities. Who would sink so slow as to rig a competition against people with mental and physical disabilities?
The answer? The Spanish. Sad is it sounds, the players on the Span's gold medal Paralympic basketball team turned out to be perfectly healthy, or at least not mentally or physically handicapped.
Undercover journalist Carlos Ribagorda ended up breaking the story. Some may think that only one or two players on the squad were ineligible to play, but that gives the Spanish way too much credit as moral and credible human beings. 10 of the 12 players on the basketball team had no handicap. They just didn't make the cut for the Olympic team is this blogger's best guess.
Press Brothers...errr Sisters
This Olympic mystery has never actually been verified, and the Press sisters retired as Russian heroes. However, if the Press "sisters" weren't men, they were pretty close. Not to demean women in any way, but there are some things men are better than women at. Namely throwing heavy objects long distances.
Tamara Press, the older sister, was one of the top female athletes in shot put and discus from 1958 until her retirement. Irina Press dominated in track and field. During this era of dominance, the Press sisters won five Olympic gold medals, one silver, and several other medals in several assorted competitions. Through all of this the sisters also managed to set 26! world records.
Now, the Press sisters can not be called cheats solely because they accomplished all this in merely two Olympic appearances, especially as we bask in the aftermath of Michael Phelps winning 8 gold medals, a new Olympics record, at the 2008 Beijing Games.
However, many people were already questioning the accomplishments of the Press sister as well as their physical appearance. Not only this, even in the 1960s the Press sisters were occasionally derogatively referred to as the "Press brothers". The conspiracy theories varied from the sisters being hermaphrodites to accusations of the use of male hormones. After their second Olympics appearance, it was announced that gender testing would be introduced. The Press sisters retired immediately after.
Tour de France Hijinks
Riding in a car during a bike race would be a really effective method of winning the race, except for its exceedingly idiotic blatancy. One might think that unless you hear the story of cyclist Acouturier.
In 1904, during the second Tour de France, Hippolyte Acouturier thought he had found a foolproof way to sidestep those meddlesome rules that were impeding his chances of winning with little or no effort. However, he can't really be blamed, since the Tour de France back then was consisted mostly of smoke and mirros, with a little bike racing in between the tricks and out and out cheating. Cyclists often resorted to extreme measures, even using nails and broken glass on the race path and putting itching powder in the other cyclists' shorts. Angry mobs could also be counted on to attack competitors as well. Basically bike racing was about a million times more entertaining back then.
Acouturier was a bit more moral than your typical Tour de France cheater, listening Floyd Landis?, and he decided against endangering his fellow riders. Instead he came up with a plan borne of pure genius and insanity.
He didn't simply grab a bumper of a car and hold on to cruise to victory. Instead, the cyclist tied a wire to the car, and tied a piece of cork to the other end which he would hold securely. This next part is where the genius came in. He held the cork with his teeth. While the plan worked somewhat, Acouturier won 4 of the then 6 stages, he still lost the race, losing to another cyclist who turned out to be also cheating. In fact the Tour de France officials ended up disqualified the 4 top finishers, awarding the victory to fifth place rider Henri Cornet. Cornet was apparently the only one to cheat in a way that wasn't overtly blatant or completely insane.
These are but a few of the many unbelievably insane sports scams ever to be attempted. No competition or sports is safe, no matter how sacred. The Olympics, the Tour de France, and even, yes as I mentioned, the Paralympics have all been touched by scandal at one point. So here's to all you cheaters, yes I'm looking at you Andrew Ahn (just kidding), may you continue to be caught and severely punished.
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