The latest example of blatant cheating in sport is by French captain Thierry Henry, in which he clearly handled the ball, thus enabling a goal to be scored which meant that in this year’s World Cup playoffs Ireland was eliminated and France went through. Ireland’s pleas to FIFA for the game to be replayed have fallen on deaf ears.
It is indeed fascinating to see the lengths people will go to in order to achieve sporting glory. An article in the Wall Street Journal – The Chutzpah Hall of Fame – provided some of these examples and I’ve added some additional ones I discovered:
1. In 2008 Formula One driver Nelson Piquet Jr. deliberately crashed his car badly at a predetermined spot on the track where there were no lifting cranes, to force officials to slow the race in order to summon the safety car. This enabled his Renault teammate to take advantage of pit-stop rules and move from the back of the pack to fifth place and then go on to win the race. Felipe Massa had been leading the race before this incident, but arguably Piquet’s cheating ended up preventing Massa frm getting any points from this race and, indeed, cost Massa the 2008 title, which he lost by just one point.
2. In August 2009 Harlequins rugby union player, Tom Williams, with coach Dean Richards’ and the physiotherapist’s connivance, was caught on camera jamming a capsule of phony blood into his sock and then later using it to pretend he had blood flowing from his mouth. This was all so he a specialist in kicking drop-goals, Nick Evans, might be able to come on as his substitute.
3. In 1994 umpires confiscated the bat of Cleveland baseball slugger, Albert Belle, after accusations he’s inserted cork into it to make it hit the ball harder. There was more to come in this sad saga. His teammate, the pitcher Jason Grimsley, crawled into the ceiling, dropped into the umpire’s dressing room and replaced the bat, though – idiot that he was – with a bat inscribed with the name “Paul Sorrento”!
4. Boris Onishchenko of the Soviet Union was considered to be the top fencer entering the 1976 Olympic Games. But suspicions were aroused when he was beating a Brit without even touching him. It turned out his épée had been rigged to trigger the electronics system that registers points in the sport. Ever since this cheat has been known as “Disonischenko.”
5. How’s this one for sheer crassness! In 2000 the Spanish basketball team took the gold in the Paralympic Games, playing in the intellectually disabled category. It turned out 10 of the 12 players weren’t disabled at all, just acting as if they were.
6. In 1980 23-year old Rosie Ruiz apparently won the Boston Marathon in 2 hours, 31 minutes and 56 seconds. But suspicions were aroused by the fact that she wasn’t very sweaty. It turned out she had spent 17 of the 26.2 miles on the subway.
7. Many will remember “the whack heard around the world” and the infamous Tanya Harding who, in 1994, arranged with her ex-husband to injure her main rival, Nancy Kerrigan, by clubbing her in the leg. Harding went on the win the competition, but then later found herself at the centre of a criminal investigation.
In the Bible perhaps the clearest example of cheating occurred when Jacob, determined to win his father’s blessing, took advantage of his father’s blindness and managed to persuade him that he was in fact his brother Esau. Poetic justice occurred when Jacob was working for Laban and Jacob, perhaps blind drunk after his wedding, woke up to discover that the wife beside him was not Rachel, as he had thought, but Leah, her sister.
God is the God of justice and, in the Bible, he often delivers it “poetically.” We say “cheats will not prosper”, but godless people think that’s hokey. We know better.
www.facetofaceintercultural.com.au
Posted December 4, 2009
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