Almost every sport has a cheating scandal. At one time or another, a person or group of people tried (and sometimes succeeded) to beat the system and outdo others. Sometimes for the money, sometimes for the fame, but one thing is always certain: it's unfair to those who play by the rules.
There are currently three cheating scandals in three different sports: chess, fishing, and poker, and each could be the worst cheating scandal in the history of a single sport.
Chess.com, the largest chess website, announced Tuesday that an internal investigation concluded that 19-year-old grandmaster Hans Niemann cheated in more than 100 games on its site.
Saturday's Lake Erie Walleye Trail Tournament on the shores of Lake Erie saw Chase Kaminsky and Jack Runyan fill fish bellies with weights for a chance to be named Team of the Year and win a $30,000 prize.
There's a frenzy in poker about Robbie Z. Liu's incredible $109,000 bluff call that turned into a $269,000 pot. Lou is accused of cheating and when he returns the winnings, he does not admit to cheating at all and even accuses him of making money hiding in a dark corridor.
Fishing, chess and poker are having a moment, but what are the biggest cheating scandals in other sports? Almost every sport has its share of cheating scandals, and you can read about the worst of them here.
Football: Spygate, by the Patriots
The NFL has been plagued by numerous cheating scandals over the last 15-20 years, so there are plenty to choose from. It has to be Bountigate, wasn't it a scam with dangerously inflated incentives? Should there be Deflategate, the alleged football fraud involving actual field equipment? Or espionage, video recording of signals from other parties?
After all, Spygate was the first and still the most talked about seizure of extravagant gestures and pearls. During the 2007 season, the New England Patriots videotaped the New York Jets defensive line during a play that commissioner Roger Goodell ruled was intentional cheating. Coach Bill Belichick was fined, the team was fined and lost in the first round. All tapes and recordings of these videos have been destroyed, leaving questions that will likely never be answered.
Baseball: Astros steal home plate to win World Series
You can say whatever you want about people taking steroids and never getting caught, but when it comes to coordinated cheating, the biggest scandal in baseball is the 2017 Houston Astros' use of signal-stealing cameras and trash can lids to communicate with them. The team accomplished this in the 2017 and 2018 seasons, including the 2017 playoffs and World Series victory over the Los Angeles Dodgers.
In the end, the players who ran the scheme were not punished because of an immunity agreement with MLB, but general manager Jeff Luhnow and manager AJ Hinch were fired and then suspended from baseball for the 2020 season. Boston Red Sox manager Alex Cora , who served as Hinch's bench coach during his breakout season, was also fired for the 2020 season, and the Red Sox went with him. Hinch and Cora have since returned to managing in the majors, with Hinch managing the Detroit Tigers and Cora returning to his job with the Red Sox.
Basketball: The Tim Donohue talking scandal
In 2007, then-referee Tim Donohue was arrested on charges of betting on hundreds of basketball games he officiated, as well as fixing games or making calls that influenced the game in his or others' favor. Donohue said he only used his knowledge of the game to place bets, but he was convicted on federal charges and sentenced to two years in prison.
Football: Serie A Calciopoli
Calciopoli was a major scandal in Serie A, the Italian soccer league. Juventus manager Luciano Moggi was caught pressuring referees at some clubs over their calls, with the scandal spreading to AC Milan, Fiorentina and Lazio. The results were wonderful. Every team involved was penalized in some way, mostly points deducted and banned from certain competitions, but Juventus received the biggest penalty. They were relegated to Serie B and dropped nine points, losing the Serie A title in 2004–05 and bottom of the table in 2005–06. Moggi, who has always maintained his innocence, resigned along with Italian Football Federation president Franco Carraro and vice-president Innocent Mazzini. Mogi was also banned for life.
Cycling: Lance Armstrong's doping
It's a simple thing. Lance Armstrong took performance-enhancing drugs for years, successfully hid them (at least for a while), and won the Tour de France seven times. When his doping was discovered, Armstrong's trophies were revoked, his foundation, the Lance Armstrong Foundation, became very successful (eventually renamed the Livestrong Foundation), and he was disgraced.
Boxing: Louis Rest has no pads
In 1983, Billy Collins Jr. In "Madison Square Garden", the rookie met with the junior welterweight Luis Resto, and the result was a surprise. Resta, better known as the Light Puncher, beat the ever-lovable Collins until his eyes were swollen shut. The punch shattered one of Collins' irises, resulting in blurred vision that ended his boxing career.
When Collins' father, who is also his trainer, shook Rest's hand at the end of the match, he felt that his boxing gloves were thin. He demanded that the gloves be confiscated and, according to the investigation, that one ounce of cushion be removed from each and replaced with chalk, something Resta finally agreed to in 2007. Restau was convicted of assault, possession of a weapon and conspiracy. He spent two and a half years in prison. As for Collins, he died in a car accident in 1984, and his family believes the loss of his livelihood contributed to his mental breakdown.
MMA: take your pick
So many MMA fighters have been arrested for doping that it's hard to single out just one. In 2000, Josh Barnett dethroned Randy Couture to become the youngest heavyweight champion in UFC history when he tested positive for a banned substance and was stripped of his title. Royce Gracie, one of the most important figures in MMA history, received a positive result after his rematch with Kazushi Sakuraba in 2007. Anderson Silva, one of the greatest MMA fighters of all time, tested positive. Nick Diaz Cris Cyborg. Chell Sonnen. Some time ago, John Jones gave a positive result. In an individual sport like MMA, doping is a major form of cheating, but it is not uncommon.
Olympics: coordinated doping in Russia
Doping in sport is often the decision of the individual athlete (and possibly the support team), but in Russia it is different because doping is widespread and state-sponsored. Between 2002 and 2016, Russia was stripped of a total of 43 Olympic medals in the shot put, shot put and cross country. More than 150 Russian athletes were baptized, which is more than in any other country in the world. In 2019, the World Anti-Doping Agency banned Russia from all sporting events for four years (since reduced to two years), including the Olympics. Since then, Russian athletes have competed in the Olympic Games, but under a neutral flag with the name "Olympic Committee of Russia" or AKR.
Figure skating: France and Russia agree on double gold
Pair figure skating at the 2002 Olympics in Salt Lake City was engulfed in scandal. In the long program, Canadians Jamie Saleh and David Pelletier skated beautifully and emotionally, almost technically flawlessly. Despite the fact that the Russians Alena Berezhnaya and Anton Shikhrulidze skated almost next to each other, there was an obvious technical skill error. Everyone was sure that Canada would win the gold medal, but Russia surprisingly won the gold and Canada won the silver.
The result was so wrong that an investigation was launched, with French referee Marie-Reine Le Gognier quickly admitting that the match had been rigged and that the head of France's national figure skating federation had put pressure on the Russian pair to achieve a record advantage. For an auspicious number for a French dancing couple. He and the head of the French skating federation were suspended for three years, and the award ceremony was repeated for the first time in history. Together with the Russians, Sale and Pelletier took the gold together. The scandal created a new scoring system in figure skating.
Paralympic Games: Spain's Paralympic basketball team
Although Spain's Paralympic basketball team for the mentally retarded won gold at the 2000 Paralympic Games in Sydney, their team was nothing like them. An undercover reporter revealed shortly after winning the gold that almost none of the players had a disability. It turned out that the required intelligence test was not administered by the Spanish Paralympic Committee, and 10 of the 12 basketball players were neither mentally retarded nor Spain's gold medalists. The team was stripped of its gold medal, and all competitions for athletes with mental disabilities were suspended for several years.
Marathon: Rosie Ruiz's subway ride
Rosie Ruiz cheated at two major marathons: the New York Marathon and the Boston Marathon. In the 1980 New York City Marathon, Ruiz started with the others, but rode the subway to the finish line, where he suffered a stroke and was declared 11th. This qualified her to compete in the Boston Marathon, where she finished with the best time among women in the race and the third fastest time of any marathon in history. Boston Marathon organizers and runners were immediately suspicious for several reasons, including the fact that no one remembered seeing him during the race. Two witnesses came forward and said they saw Ruiz run into the crowd with half a kilometer to go. Ruiz's cheating in Boston found him riding the subway in New York and he was disqualified from both races.