Winning means everything

The whole of Ireland is crying foul after French striker Thierry Henry's hand ball lead to the match winning goal last Wednesday. The score was 1-1 and likely to head into penalties, until 'the hand of the frog' intervened, sending France through to the soccer World Cup and Ireland into an uproar. Ireland, along with much of the world have labeled Henry as a cheat, a title he is likely to carry with him for the rest of his career, but how does Henry compare to some of the greatest cheats in Sport? Some people will do what ever it takes to win. Deception, ingenuity and violence, this count down has it all.

Technical Error

To kick start our count down is the crafty, Boris Onschenko. Noone really cared about Fencing or the Modern Pentathlon in the 1976 Olympics until Onschenko put it on the front pages of every newspaper.

Onschenko was a Soviet Pentathlete, whose strongest event was believed to be Fencing.
In fencing a touch is registered on the scoring box when the tip of the weapon is depressed with a force of 750 grams. In the 1976 Olympics, Onschenko wired his sword so that he could trigger the electronic scoring system with his hand and register a hit at will.

Dirty Sox


Hate your boss? Take leaf out of the book of cheater number nine, the 1919 White Sox.

In the 1919 World Series, the heavy favourites the White Sox thre the series 5-3 against the Cincinnati Reds. It was one of the earliest cases of athletes throwing a contest. The motives, besides money, was the apparent hatred towards the owner. A year later the players admitted their parts and were banned for life.

Bloody Oath

Tom Williams from the Harlequins, took one for the team at number eight.

In a Rugby game against the Harlequins and Lienster in the Heineken Cup,
Williams took a fake-blood capsule on to the field in his sock when he joined the game in the 69th minute. Then bursting it in his mouth after 75 minutes with the score 6-5 to Leinster. With blood pouring from his Mouth the Harlequins were able to substitute goal kicker, Nick Evans in a bid to win the game. Suspicion was raised when Williams winked at the Harlequins bench. A scalpel was then used to cut the inside of Williams mouth when officials demanded to see the injury. The Harlequins were fined £215,000 and Williams received a 12 month ban.


Accidentally on Purpose


Number seven on the count down is, Formula One team Renault and Nelson Pique Jnr, who crashed two laps after teammate Fernando Alonso had made a Pitt stop. The Crash brought out the Safety car and put Alonso in a position to win the race, which he did.


Spot the Difference

Number six, Fine Cotton, comes straight from a gangster movie.

In one of Australia's biggest horse racing scandals, Fine Cotton (an average racehorse) was substituted by Bold Personality (a really good horse) before a 1500m race at Eagle Farm, Brisbane in 1984. After winning the race, suspicion was raised by the vast improvement and large sums of money put on the horse, not the mention the white paint on Bold Personalities leg that had started to run.

Basket Case

The fifth Cheater in our list, the Spanish Paralympics Basketball team, who dared to do what most of us weekend athletes have only thought about.

In 2000 Paralympics, the Gold medal winning Spanish team only had 3 players with a mental disability; the remaining 9 team members did not have a disability at all. They were forced to hand back their medals.

Okay so maybe I’m the only one who’s thought about faking a disability to compete at the Paralympics, but still thinking about it is one thing actually cheating the disabled is taking it too far.

Bloody Swan Dive

If you think soccer players dive too much bear in mind Cheater number four Chilean goalkeeper Roberta Rojas .

In 1989 world cup qualifier between Chile and Brazil, Chile was trailing by 1 goal when a spectator threw a firecracker into the penalty area Roberta Rojas dives into the smoke takes a hidden scalpel and cuts his own head, to make it look like the firecracker hit him in the head. The match was abandoned because conditions were deemed too dangerous. His rouse was later discovered by Video evidence, Brazil was given a 2-0 victory and Roberta Rojas was banned for life.

Taking out your opponent

Cheater Number Three, ice skater Tonya Harding, took the words ‘take out your opponents’ too literally.

In a practice session in 1994, in the lead up to the American Olympic trials Nancy Kerrigan was assaulted by a man hired by Hardings ex-husband Jeff Gillooly and friend Shawn Eckardt. As Kerrigan was leaving the Rink a man in a corridor used a baton to take out both of Kerrigan’s Knee, leading to the very famous Video of Kerrigan yelling “Why? Why? Why?”.

A Sailor went to sea

Living with the guilt was too much for cheater number two, Donald Crowhurst to bear.

Donald Crowhurst a businessman and amateur sailor entered the 1968 Golden Globe race, an around the world yacht race. Crowhurt was ill prepared and abandoned the race shortly after. He hung around the South Atlantic while making false radio reports on his location. According to Crowhursts reports, Nigel Tetly believed he was coming second and pushed his failing yacht to breaking point. Tetly was then forced to abandon ship even though he was leading the race by a very long margin. While floating around in the South Atlantic Crowhurst mental state started to deteriorate, over come by guilt Crowhurst committed suicide.

Deadly blow

Lewis Resto and Panama Lewis the most ruthless cheaters and that’s saying something when up against some of the cheaters in this countdown, but none of the others involve violence, gambling, and death quite like our number one.

In a fight between Lewis Resto and Billy Collins Jnr (pictured) in 1983, Resto’s trainer Panama Lewis removed most of the padding from Resto’s boxing gloves. There was a lot of money in it for Resto who was the underdog. In the bout, Collins suffered a torn iris and permanently blurred vision, ending his boxing career. Collins became depressed and nine months later drove off a cliff. In October 1986, Lewis and Resto were both put on trial and found guilty of assault, criminal possession of a weapon (Resto's hands) and conspiracy. Lewis was sentenced to six years in prison, Resto to three years. Many years later it was revealed that Lewis had dipped Resto’s hand wraps in Plaster. (See the documentary Assault in the Ring)


1 comments:

ajtaylor said...

The suicide ones depress me and the cutting ones remind me of Emo's... pretty dark blog Alpii :P jkz

Love the Horse one but HAHA

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