the biggest cheats in sport?

[Jonathan Rogers]

This must be a very difficult question to answer, though I am pretty sure that chess palyers are nowhere near.

Speaking with my partner, I wonder whether it might be cyclists. For those who read French, this is a link to a very funny article in Liberation

http://www.liberation.fr/sports/2012/08 ... ong_841592

On the assumption that Lance Armstrong will be stripped of his seven Tour de France titles, the premise of the article is to decide who was next in line on each occasion - disregarding candidates against whom there was also strong contemporary or subsequently discovered evidence of drug taking. The "true" winners then tend to be complete unknowns, one of whom finished tenth in the official records!

(En passant though, a Forum rebuke to Liberation for recently axing its daily chess column)

[Ian Thompson]

This must be a very difficult question to answer

Footballers - cheating is endemic. Watch a match this afternoon and count how many times players deliberately fall down whenever an opposing player touches them, no matter how lightly, roll around on the ground feigning serious injury when they are fouled, or try to claim thrown ins, goal kicks, etc, when they know their side touched the ball last.

[Eoin Devane]

The "true" winners then tend to be complete unknowns, one of whom finished tenth in the official records!

Not exactly "complete unknowns", though certainly they all have a much lower public profile than Lance Armstrong. In fact, the guy who finished tenth (Carlos Sastre) is probably one of the more well-known of them, as he went on to win the 2008 Tour outright.

As to your main point, you are certainly right that for a long time there has been a major problem with doping in cycling. However, you have to credit the authorities within the sport for taking all the action that they have against it. The anti-doping programme within cycling is, without a doubt, the most stringent in any sport, comprising large numbers of in-competition and out-of-competition tests together with the "biological passport" which monitors long-term trends in the cyclists' values. Coming back to the article above, many of the riders linked with doping there were implicated through the Operacion Puerto scandal of 2006, the biggest doping scandal to hit cycling since the Festina affair of 1998. However, allegedly (alleged by the doctor at the heart of it all, no less, Eufemiano Fuentes) there were athletes from other sports involved, and yet only the cyclists' names have ever come out. I'm not trying to play down the doping in cycling - for sure it's a major problem - but you do have to applaud the authorities for their pursuit of dopers and their attempts to rid the peleton of them.

[David Gilbert]

This must be a very difficult question to answer

Footballers - cheating is endemic. Watch a match this afternoon and count how many times players deliberately fall down whenever an opposing player touches them, no matter how lightly, roll around on the ground feigning serious injury when they are fouled, or try to claim thrown ins, goal kicks, etc, when they know their side touched the ball last.

I agree. Footballers are miles ahead in the cheating stakes. Holding, pulling, pushing, kicking, tripping, falling, anything they think they can get away with. And the thing that really gets me is the protest of innocence and injustice when they are caught.

[Ray Sayers]

I'm surprised relatively few footballers move on to acting careers.

[John Upham]

I'm surprised relatively few footballers move on to acting careers.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xf-4Gbqyni4

[Paolo Casaschi]

This must be a very difficult question to answer

Footballers - cheating is endemic.

It's even worse than that. In football (and other team sports with contact among players) it is somehow accepted to break the rules if that is convenient at the given point. For example, when a player is passing past you, you can voluntarily stop him accepting that the resulting free kick is better for you than the risk of your opponent running forward with the ball past you. Coming from a game with strict rules like chess, you'd think that every voluntary break of the rules results in a red card, but it's not. And the worse is, this behavior is not even considered cheating.

[Alan Burke]

Perhaps football should adopt some rules from Rugby League:

1 .. Sin Bin.
Anyone who deliberately breaks the laws is sent off for 10 minutes. (Thesedays footballers are quite happy to receive a yellow card if it means preventing an opponent from gaining an advantage).

2 .. 10 metre penalty
Any dissent to the referee following a decision results in the subsequent free-kick being advance 10 metres forward (If dissent occurs at any other time - corner, throw-in, etc - then the ruling will apply to the next free-kick to be awarded).

3 .. On-field trainer
Let the trainer come onto the field whilst play is continuing to attend to any injured player. This would stop those players who fall down on the floor and roll around as though they have been shot when someone has just touched the very edge of their fingernail - they would then have to get up as play would not be stopped. (It would also stop the pathetic issue when someone goes on the floor and the ball is then kicked out of play so he can receive treatment and the ball is then returned unchallenged to the other team whilst the player hobbles off only to return, magically fully fit, just a couple of seconds later.)

Why is it that a footballer falls down after the slightest of touches and requires treatment, yet a rugby player is knocked to the floor by two or more opponents and just stands up and gets on with the game ? The answer - footballers are cheats !

Yes, some football followers, as well as players and mangers, will say the above rulings are not required in the game, but they are just the ones who don't want to see the failings in the game which is obvious to those outside of it.

[David Robertson]

This must be a very difficult question to answer, though I am pretty sure that chess players are nowhere near

I wouldn't be too sure of that. Correspondence chess players?

[Peter D Williams]

Perhaps football should adopt some rules from Rugby League:

1 .. Sin Bin.
Anyone who deliberately breaks the laws is sent off for 10 minutes. (Thesedays footballers are quite happy to receive a yellow card if it means preventing an opponent from gaining an advantage).

2 .. 10 metre penalty
Any dissent to the referee following a decision results in the subsequent free-kick being advance 10 metres forward (If dissent occurs at any other time - corner, throw-in, etc - then the ruling will apply to the next free-kick to be awarded).

3 .. On-field trainer
Let the trainer come onto the field whilst play is continuing to attend to any injured player. This would stop those players who fall down on the floor and roll around as though they have been shot when someone has just touched the very edge of their fingernail - they would then have to get up as play would not be stopped. (It would also stop the pathetic issue when someone goes on the floor and the ball is then kicked out of play so he can receive treatment and the ball is then returned unchallenged to the other team whilst the player hobbles off only to return, magically fully fit, just a couple of seconds later.)

Why is it that a footballer falls down after the slightest of touches and requires treatment, yet a rugby player is knocked to the floor by two or more opponents and just stands up and gets on with the game ? The answer - footballers are cheats !

Yes, some football followers, as well as players and mangers, will say the above rulings are not required in the game, but they are just the ones who don't want to see the failings in the game which is obvious to those outside of it.

I have seen rugby players fall down after the slightest touch and not object when the referee sent that player off for just touching the player!

[Alan Burke]

It is of course easy to say that someone saw a certain incident ... but such a statement would be more credible if details could be provided (ie teams; player; date).

In case an example from football is asked for; there was the Brazilian player at the World Cup who was hit on the leg by the ball and then fell down holding his face and got the opponent sent off.

Even if such a statement about rugby was proven to be true, why should that be any answer to what footballers do ?

[Paul Dupré]

Florence Griffith-Joyner (Flo-Jo) 1988

Quit after 1984 Olympics, then three years later won the US Olympic trials in new world record, beating her previous best by about 0.5 second - some say wind assisted.

Clearly improved by using drugs as one Brazilian athletic claimed that "Griffith-Joyner's times could only have been the result of using steroids or other performance-enhancing drugs, that her physique had changed dramatically in 1988 (showing marked gains in muscle mass and definition), and that her performance had improved dramatically over a short period of time".

[Clive Blackburn]

I think that cheating is more endemic in cricket than in football.

I'm not talking about minor incidents such as ball tampering or appealing when you know that the batsman was not out. That is similar to a footballer falsely claiming a penalty.

I'm referring to the vast sums of money paid to international cricketers by Asian betting syndicates to manipulate the statistics, for instance by bowling a number of no-balls at a particular point in the match.

I would like to think that this doesn't happens in football, at any rate not in England, but it easily could do (for instance, it would be very simple for a player to get himself a red card if he had been offered enough money to do it).

[Greg Breed]

Greed is ruining most of these sports. A lot of Premiership footballers are earning several million pounds a year and still some feel they need to get a little more by "cheating".
I think the Rugby rules should be enforced in football and a forth referee with tv replay equipment should be consulted for dubious and off-the-ball incidents.
Only captains are allowed to approach the referee and any dissent is rewarded with a 10-yard (Metre) retreat. Persistent dissent then results in a caution (yellow-card). If the captain hasn't by then restrained his player he faces allowing the opposing team's free-kick to be "walked" into the penalty box for an easy goal-scoring opportunity.
Some people only learn the hard way!

[Brian Valentine]

Sean,

I thought the only difference between cricketing cheats and football cheats was their competence:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/footba ... mpton.html