Winning at All Costs: The 7 Biggest Cheats in Sporting History
When Winning is All That Matters: A List of Not-So-Magnificent Sporting Cheats!
Deception, trickery and downright fraud - who are the biggest cheats in sporting history? The Sporting Blog tells all.
Cheat Rosie Ruiz finishes the Boston Marathon
Spectators need to believe that sporting contests are clean. Without that sense of fair play, why would we invest so much time in the outcome?
However, sports can still be manipulated by flawed systems and human beings.
And it seems some people will stop at nothing to cheat those systems...
Rosie Ruiz Takes a ShortCut
In the 1980 Boston Marathon, 26-year-old New Yorker Rosie Ruiz became the fastest woman over 26 miles, finishing in just over two and a half hours.
She looked remarkably perky for someone who had just set a new world record, but Ruiz insisted there was a simple reason: “I just got up this morning with a lot of energy.”
Suspicion grew when it was discovered that no checkpoint officials or runners could remember even seeing her on the course, and she was unable to describe any specific landmarks, instead offering a bland description of “beautiful countryside and lots of houses and churches.”
It eventually transpired that Ruiz had taken the subway and hopped off for the last half mile, the same method she had used, undetected, in the New York Marathon to qualify for the Boston race.
Not surprisingly, she was disqualified and became the butt of various quips, including this from the Washington Post:
“Instead of crying on National TV, she should have written a book, Shortcuts to Fame.”
Ali Dia: The Rogue Footballer
When Southampton manager Graeme Souness received a call from Liberian football legend George Weah (“Well, it sounded like George Weah”) advising him to take a look at his cousin Ali Dia, Souness felt obliged to listen.
However, the Scot was duped into giving Dia a month’s trial.
The Senegalese forward was eager to prove himself and got his chance in a game against Leeds in November 1996, replacing none other than Saints legend Matt Le Tissier:
“The Premiership is an exciting place to play. I feel I have a bit of pace, and I can dribble well”.
Like deceptive footballer Carlos Kaiser, it became clear that Dia had no pace, no dribble and no skill - and after 40 minutes of humiliation, Souness substituted the substitute.
He was expunged from the coastal club two weeks into his contract, having earned £2k. He joined Gateshead for a £1.5k signing fee and played one match. Le Tissier described him as like “Bambi on ice.”
Read more controversial footballer profiles on our football blog
Boris Onischenko Lives and Dies by the Sword
A KGB Colonel, Onischenko became known as “Boris the Cheat” after his performance at the 1976 Montreal Olympics.
He had already claimed the silver medal in the modern pentathlon four years earlier at the Munich games and was determined to go one better by foul means.
Britons Adrian Parker and captain Jim Fox fenced with Onischenko, noticing that the Soviet was scoring points when his épée was missing by a country foot.
Olympic officials examined the sword at Great Britain’s request and discovered that it had a hidden trigger by which ‘DisOnischenko’ could trigger the electronic scoring system.
The honest Brits won the gold, and the rules were changed so that grips could not hide wires or switches. Now, only the best fencers can achieve big.
Ben Johnson: The Drug Runner
The 1988 100-metre final at Seoul has been called the “dirtiest race ever” because six of the eight competitors were eventually discovered to have taken performance-enhancing drugs.
In the actual race, half of the starters broke the 10-second barrier and the sprint was ‘won’ by Canada's Ben Johnson, the reigning world champion and fastest man on the planet, who posted a new world record of 9.79.
He boasted:
“A gold medal—that’s something no one can take away from you.”
Within 72 hours, Johnson had lost the title after testing positive for anabolic steroids.
The race was given to Carl Lewis, one of the greatest sprinters of all-time and the defending champion, who had always suspected Johnson’s foul play.
Britain’s Linford Christie was upgraded to bronze, despite later testing positive for the stimulant pseudoephedrine, which he blamed on taking ginseng tea.
It later emerged that Lewis had tested positive for stimulants during the 1988 US Olympic trials but had a 12-week suspension overturned by the United States Olympic Committee. This allowed him to claim the gold, albeit by default.
Diego Maradona’s Hand of God
The 1986 World Cup quarter-final between England and Argentina in Mexico City was bound to be a heated affair - and not just because of the intense temperature at altitude.
The match was billed by American outlets as a sequel to the Falklands War, which had happened four years previously. Diego Maradona was not quiet on the subject:
“We knew that the English had killed a lot of Argentine boys in the Malvinas, killed them like little boys.”
On the pitch, the score was still goalless when Maradona went up for a ball with England’s goalkeeper Peter Shilton and punched the ball into the net.
To their collective horror, the Three Lions realised the goal was not going to be chalked off, even though the assistant referee “immediately felt there was something irregular”.
Maradona showed no compunction. “I am not sorry for scoring with my hand,” he wrote in his book ‘Touched by God: How we won the Mexico ’86 World Cup’. “Not sorry at all!”
Just minutes after the deception, the little master scored an immaculate goal, leaving defenders and Shilton in his wake, to seal the victory.
Lance Armstrong Recycles A Lie
Lance Armstrong took performance-enhancing drugs for years without detection, winning the Tour de France seven times in the process and becoming one of the greatest cyclists of all-time.
When he mounted the podium after his final victory in 2005, he described it thus:
“Finally, the last thing I’ll say to the people who don’t believe in cycling, the cynics and the sceptics: I’m sorry for you. I’m sorry that you can’t dream big. I’m sorry you don’t believe in miracles.”
In 2013, he finally admitted the deed(s) in an interview with Oprah Winfrey. It was cheating on an industrial scale.
The U.S. Postal Service Cycling Team "ran the most sophisticated, professionalised, and successful doping program that sport has ever seen," the US Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) said in its report.
Armstrong said he was driven to cheat by a "ruthless desire to win." His yellow jerseys were erased from the record books, but he said “absolutely” when asked if they were still on display at home.
Spain’s Very Able Basketball Team: 2000 Paralympics
The 2000 Olympics in Sydney are warmly remembered as one of the greatest, but the Paralympics in the same city was tainted with scandal.
When a picture of the victorious Spanish intellectual disability basketball team was published by national sports daily Marca, a flurry of readers claimed they recognised players who had no such condition.
Carlos Ribagorda, a member of the actual squad, broke ranks just days after the event to confirm that he and other members of Spain’s squad in track and field, table tennis and swimming had no disability.
The International Paralympic Committee investigation discovered that 10 members of the basketball team posed as mentally disabled players with the help of fake medical certificates.
The medals were stripped and the next two games in Athens and Beijing did not include any events for learning difficulty athletes.
Do you remember any of these big cheating moments? Is there someone we should add to our list? Tell us in the comments!
