It’s been a vintage year for cheating
Roar Rookie By Matthew Maguire, 20 Sep 2009 Matthew Maguire is a Roar Rookie
- Tagged:
- cheating, eduardo, F1, Fernando Alonso, Grand Prix, nelson piquet, race-fixing, renault, Sport, UEFA
It’s only September but with the football codes drawing to a close for another season and most international events done and dusted for another year, it is timely to look back on a year where cheating has reached new heights.
Just as importantly, we have seen many sports governing bodies turn a blind eye with weak or no action at all.
This week has seen the fallout of what many are describing as the worst act of cheating in sporting history.
To inject EPO or steroids no doubt gives unfair advantage to a competitor and, once caught, brings shame and disrepute to both the athlete and the sport in question. But for a Formula One team, in this case Renault, to order driver Nelson Piquet Jr to deliberately crash at high speed to gain position for team-mate Fernando Alonso, takes the stakes to a whole new level.
It bordered on life threatening for Piquet, his fellow drivers and potentially race stewards and the crowd. The stakes were so much higher than performance enhancing drug use.
Team principle Flavio Briatore and engineering director Pat Symonds have been given the flick for their role in the events at last year’s Singapore GP, leaving the FIA with only one viable course of action – to suspend Renault for at least one season, preferably many.
Such a decision would be significantly more than the lily livered efforts of UEFA this week in their lifting of a two match suspension on Arsenal striker Eduardo, originally banned for a blatant and goal winning dive in last month’s Champions League qualifier against Glasgow Celtic.
Simulation is pure cheating.
FIFA and UEFA do themselves and the game a disservice by even calling it simulation. Label it cheating, with defined penalties on field and via video review.
The IAAF was also in a generous mood this week, endorsing the decision by the Jamaican Anti Doping Appeals Tribunal to hand out just 3 month suspensions to four Jamaican sprinters who failed drug tests before the World Athletics Championships in Berlin in August.
The incredibly lenient suspensions will run to December 14, meaning the four relay runners will not miss a single athletics meet.
In the year Fine Cotton passed away peacefully at age 31, utterly unaware of his place in racing history and Australian sporting scandal, several horses failed drug tests.
Failed equine drug tests do not always indicate deliberate cheating as it does in humans, however it casts considerable doubt on trainer and beast.
Pacer Em Maguane was found chock full of EPO in May and thoroughbreds War Dancer and Benelli have also tested positive, with the penalty for those failed tests still to be decided.
Em Maguane trainer Jeremy Quinlan was banned for six years.
Then there was the just plain strange ‘Bloodgate’ where the Harlequins were exposed as serial cheats by inventing fake injuries to make otherwise illegal substitutions during matches.
The scam went to such lengths as the club physio deliberately cut the mouth of winger Tom Williams after the match in an attempt to legitimise the injury.
Harlequins have now been found guilty of the scam on at least four occasions with penalties including a four month ban for Williams, a two year ban for physio Steph Brennan and a three year suspension for club director Dean Richards, while the club has been fined more than $500,000.
Add the comparatively small sporting crime of ‘time wasting by sending the physio out after every over at Cardiff fiasco’, those butter wouldn’t melt in their mouths Swiss and their formally ineligible America’s Cup catamaran, complete with motorised sail trims and electronic steering and the soon to be outlawed polyurethane swim suits that saw 43 world records fall in eight days, wiping the names of the true greats from the books forever, and it hasn’t been a great year for fairness in sport.
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- cheating, eduardo, F1, Fernando Alonso, Grand Prix, nelson piquet, race-fixing, renault, Sport, UEFA
September 20th 2009 @ 10:33am
LeftArmSpinner said | September 20th 2009 @ 10:33am | Report comment
matthew, good summary and a very sad year for sport. and this is just the stuff that gets caught. It retrospect, it is so obvious. But, at the time, even the experts dont notice it. In particular, the F1 example. renault crashes, renault wins…
At least the Rugby boys were on to it immediately……………..
September 20th 2009 @ 2:04pm
Adam said | September 20th 2009 @ 2:04pm | Report comment
Good article Matt.
The almighty dollar that sporting success brings seems too big a lure for clubs and organisations to worry about fairness anymore. A real shame. Good post.
September 20th 2009 @ 2:29pm
Shane said | September 20th 2009 @ 2:29pm | Report comment
We should always concentrate on the good sport provides us but yeah, all good examples of the ordinary efforts by those who run sport lately.
Hopefully 2010 and beyond sees them clean up their act
September 22nd 2009 @ 11:31am
Greg Russell said | September 22nd 2009 @ 11:31am | Report comment
Do you read Simon Barnes of The Times? In the last few days he has published an article with exactly the same theme as yours, and concentrating on the same examples (although at the margins you each have a few different examples).
September 23rd 2009 @ 1:46pm
damos_x said | September 23rd 2009 @ 1:46pm | Report comment
just had a look at the Barnes article, mmmm…… quite inspirational isn’t it…..
October 11th 2009 @ 12:40am
Matthew Maguire said | October 11th 2009 @ 12:40am | Report comment
It has been almost a month since I have been back on here and, while no doubt nobody will see this comment at this late stage, I must post it.
I had absolutely NOT seen the Simon Barnes article you refer to and have only sought it out for comparison as I write this response to the above allegations.
If the article I have found on the net from that week is the one you refer to (and I have no way of knowing for certain if it is), you have go to be joking.
The article (mine…well, his as well i suppose), was written in the aftermath of the F1 revelations involving Renault.
In searching for his article on the net, I have found almost 65 other articles from that period that refer in some way to that partiular scandal. Hardly surprising – it was the story of the moment. Would you accuse Barnes of plagiarising those others?
The only genuine comparison I can see between the articles is the use of the phrase ‘…worst act of cheating in sporting history,’ or words to that effect. I can honestly say that was a phrase I heard used on Fox Sports (and no doubt elsewhere) and thats why in my piece it was written as;
“This week has seen the fallout of what many are describing as the worst act of cheating in sporting history.”
‘…what many are describing…’ – not me, the media (although I do agree with the sentiment)
The Barnes piece I am looking through now makes a mockery of comparing football diving with the F1 incident. I did the opposite. Then he goes on about spear tackling in Union. Similarities over.
In the week I posted the piece, F1 revelations hit the media, Bloodgate penalties were imposed, four Jamaican sprinters were disqualified for a mere 3 months when no international competition takes place during that period and Eduardo’s ban for diving was rescinded by a FIFA appeals board. I mainly included the latter as I am a Celtic fan and Eduardo’s dive cost Celtic a penalty.
I also talk about Americas Cup shenanigans (which I written an article about in the past), blood doping in the horse racing industry, the death of Fine Cotton and the swim suit saga that is destroying international swimming (something I have also written of in the last two months). None of these are covered in the Barnes article.
All topics were in the mainstream media in the week (even on the very day!) I posted the article. Others on this site probably also wrote about some of them.
But you wish to compare one paragraph of mine with a Simon Barnes piece? Give me a break. What I find most surprising is the site I found his article on – The Times.
I had to look twice… Times Of London? What the hell would I (or anyone for that matter), be reading the Times Of London for? I dont even read The West Australian over here!!
My only regret is my absence from this site for many weeks has not allowed me to defend myself before now and, so long after the event, I recognise no one will see this comment. Still, it must be done.
I do not think two, ten or a hundred people writing about the same event is some sort of conspiracy – nor do I believe two, ten or a hundred people having a similar point to make on an issue equates to plagiarism.
In such a serious issue as the F1 Renault scandal, who could genuinely have any other belief than the one I and, it appears, Simon Barnes and many others, held. It was a disgrace.
For what its worth, I deny the lot. Cheers for the slander.