Misconduct | What is the worst cheating in sports history?

The section where journalists from the Sports team The Press answer a question with pleasure.

Mathias Brunet

They were two great rivals on the international figure skating scene. The American Nancy Kerrigan caused a surprise at the Albertville Olympic Games in 1992 by winning bronze ahead of her compatriot Tonya Harding, who was the favorite. Kerrigan, this young woman with an angelic look, quickly became the darling Americans. Harding, on the other hand, had a less sophisticated demeanor. It was a bit like the story of the ugly duckling versus the beloved princess. Seven weeks before the start of the 1994 Olympic Games in Lillehammer, Kerrigan was the victim of a brutal attack after training in Detroit, on the edge of her locker room. A man has just struck him in the right leg with an iron bar. The images are going around the world. Kerrigan, in tears, poignantly repeats this sentence: “Why? For what ? » We quickly discover the identity of the assailant: he was hired by Harding’s former husband, Jeff Gillooly. Harding denies being involved in Gillooly’s plans and is allowed to participate in the Games. Fortunately for Kerrigan, she escaped with a bruised thigh and won the silver medal. Karma hits Harding. She suffered a broken lace during her performance and settled for eighth place. A few months later, she was found guilty in the affair and was banned for life by the American Figure Skating Association. What followed was tumultuous for her. Tonya Harding became a wrestler, got into trouble with the law and even attempted suicide. His story was the subject of a feature-length fiction film. She would now have found serenity, but realized the truth of the adage “crime does not pay”.

Alexander Pratt

The Houston Astros and their trash? Phew. These are kitties in the list of signal theft systems in baseball. There have been much more sophisticated schemes. In 1900, the Philadelphia Phillies designed an underground electrical system worthy of a spy novel. A team employee sitting in the center field bleachers watched the opposing catcher’s signals through binoculars, decoded them, then relayed them to the third base coach. How ? By sending an electrical impulse that the instructor felt under his foot, at a predetermined location near the cushion. The coach then indicated to the batter the expected shot. Except that one day, the Cincinnati Reds shortstop suspected a scam. During a break, he went near third base and began digging frantically in the field, where the Phillies instructor had been standing since the beginning of the game. A police officer and a grounds maintenance worker tried to stop him. In vain. The Reds have dug up the magic box. The cheaters were exposed.

Nicholas Richard

When an athlete cheats, like Lance Armstrong, it’s scandalous. When a team cheats, like the Houston Astros, it is unacceptable. When an entire nation cheats, like Russia did at the 2014 Sochi Games, there are no qualifiers. There is no word powerful and meaningful enough to name this absolutely disgusting way of doing things. It’s brilliant, to a certain extent, because this whole system highlighted in the excellent documentary Icarus was thought out and executed almost perfectly. But in absolute terms, the way in which the Russians have usurped the system, betrayed the trust of the sporting world and disrupted the honesty, authenticity and careers of their athletes must be considered the greatest cheat in history Sport. Systemic doping orchestrated by the nation’s most important politicians to ruin the biggest sporting competition in the world? Nothing will ever be this bad.

Jean-François Tremblay

It’s already something to have a single cheater, sometimes a few, even worse a team or a national organization. That’s still small beer compared to… 11,000 cheaters. The 2023 Mexico City marathon will go down in history for having been the scene of 11,000 disqualifications, or almost a third of those registered. These runners all missed different checkpoints along the route, for different reasons ranging from taking shortcuts to using bikes or even… public transportation. Worse: it was not the first time that thousands of runners were disqualified in Mexico! This also happened in 2017 and 2018. A little advice in closing, if you don’t want to run the entire marathon, there is a very good way to go about it: stay at home. Ultimately, no one is forcing you to do it.