Shameful Incidents In American Sporting History

Competitive sports are all about competing! That’s why we love it, watch it, and cheer for our favorite athletes. The goal of professional athletes is to become the best of the best. There have been plenty of examples in the history of the sport of those who did everything and anything to win, whether it was right or wrong. Unfortunately, every nation had to deal with sports scandals.

Many times individual athletes or coaches make their countries look bad. When people want to win or earn a fortune, they tend to do disgraceful things. We put together a list of the shameful incidents in American sporting history!

The Black Sox Scandal

To this day, the 1919 baseball finals in the World Series, more precisely the Chicago White Sox, which is mockingly referred to as the Chicago Black Sox, are considered one of the most shameful incidents in American history. The 1918 season became shorter because of World War I, and many players were recruited and sent to the front or had to take a job serving the military industry. So, either they could continue playing in the MLB or not. According to online sportsbook sites in the US, their salary was low, which inspired the scam.

After the end of the war, the 1919 season began with renewed momentum, and the players also saw it as a new beginning. The 1919 final went on until a team won five matches, each consisting of nine innings. Although Cincinnati closed with better scores in the regular season than Chicago, the latter had a better chance. So they had to do their scam wisely so it wouldn’t be so obvious. The White Sox lost the first game 9-1. Eventually, they lost the final to Cincinnati 5-3 deliberately. Allegedly, they won $ 100,000.

 Although a few experts found a move from the final suspicious, no scam accusations were made against the Chicago White Sox for a year. Even then, it was only by accident when they investigated a non-White Sox match that they took a closer look at the oddities of the 1919 final. In 1920, eight people were finally brought to court due to committing a betting scam. Many admitted being guilty but were acquitted. However, they banned all eight suspected players from baseball forever.

Shameful Moments in the American Sporting History

This story is a chain of sad events and a nasty crime at the same time. One of the most shameful moments in American sporting history was the 1994 attack on figure skater Nancy Kerrigan. Two days before the Olympic trials, she was hit on his right lower thigh by a telescopic baton. As it turned out, a man hired by another figure skater, Tonya Harding, attacked Nancy after a practice session to take out the most likely pick so Harding could ensure her victory. 

Tonya Harding, who was behind the attack, admitted that they, with her violent ex-husband, wanted to make her rival uncompetitive. Tonya’s husband had a couple of friends who came up with the idea, executed the attack, and then fled the scene. Kerrigan couldn’t step on the ice in the trials, but the rules allowed her to compete in the Olympics. Tonya never admitted to the crime, so her husband took the blame. However, there are two sides to each coin.

Tonya’s mother abused the young figure skater physically and verbally. Her mother’s fifth husband had a son who tried to hurt her, so she had to call the police. Her mother married for the sixth time, and since the 18-year-old Tonya couldn’t pay rent to them, they threw her out.

A year later, she married a man who beat her and even shot at her. So that didn’t work out either. Even so, she was getting better at figure skating and had only one true rival, Nancy. Tonya worked incredibly hard to climb the career ladder, but due to her chaotic personal life, she lost too many times.

The Road To The Attack

Even though Tonya tried to cut ties with her ex-husband and was terrified of him, they stayed in touch. Nancy was not rich either, but she came from a peaceful and loving background, so her performance was balanced. Not like Tonya’s, who had ups and downs. She was also much more feminine than Tonya, who had a more masculine figure lined with muscles. Since figure skating is about graceful movements, Nancy already had an advantage over Tonya before they even set foot on the ice.

The attack did not achieve its purpose. Tonya did terribly in the Olympics, and Nancy was one-tenth of a point away from the gold medal. After Tonya confessed to being partly guilty, the court banned her from competing forever. She begged to go to prison instead, but the judge refused. According to Nancy, she never apologized for being part of one of the most shameful incidents in American history. Check out more details about the Harding-Kerrigan scandal at online sportsbook sites in the US!

Scandal at the Paralympics

The Paralympics is one of the most popular sporting events in the world for athletes with physical or mental disabilities. The first Paralympics was held in Rome in 1960 in the name of equal opportunities. Which is what the Spanish basketball team made a mockery of. At the Sydney Paralympic Games in 2000, the majority of members of the Spanish basketball team, 10 out of 12 players, participated in the event without being eligible. 

As it turned out, they did not have any mental disabilities. The players pretended to be mentally disabled to compete in the Games and win the gold medal for their country due to their obvious superiority, which they did. There is only one condition for participation in the Paralympics for the intellectual disabled: their IQ level has to be less or a maximum of 75 points. 

Statements revealed that the players of the Spanish team did not have to pass any tests or field inspections. Also, nobody asked for any certification for the competition. The INAS-FID’s Spanish president orchestrated the whole thing so the athletes could slip through the tests. The investigation and interviews revealed that several Spanish “Paralympic athletes” won medals in a similar way at the 2000 Paralympics. It is still one of the most shameful incidents in American sporting history.

The Consequences

The International Paralympic Committee (IPC) decided not to organize the Paralympic Games in 2004 or 2008. Many saw the decision as a collective punishment that banned thousands of innocent athletes. Critics of this verdict thought that excluding the mentally disabled was a violation of the spirit of the Paralympics and equal opportunities. Athletes with intellectual disabilities were able to return to the Paralympics under stricter conditions in London in 2012.

Shameful Incidents in the American Sporting History

Boxing is undeniably one of the roughest sports, with numerous injuries and tragic accidents in the squared circle, but Resto’s actions were brutal even in the world of boxing. His goal was intentional bodily harm. In 1983, a match between Luis Resto and the undefeated American Billy Collins Junior shocked the world of sports. Resto won the ten-round box match even though people considered him the less likely winner. The celebration after the event was spoiled by two things. 

Collins’ eyes swelled shut from the blows, and as it turned out later, the iris in his eyes cracked, so his vision remained blurred for the rest of his life. Suspicions rose then because an average boxing glove can’t cause such an injury. Collins’s coach noticed that Resto’s gloves were thinner and stiffer than usual. Examination of the gloves revealed that they removed the big paddings and replaced them with crushed chalk, which could have made the blows fatal. 

The investigation revealed that Resto’s coach was responsible for reshaping the gloves, but Resto himself denied knowing about the chalks for a long time. However, the court was not affected by this. According to 22Bet, in 1986, Resto and his coach were charged with assault. They revoked his boxing license and declared the match illegal. Part of the tragedy is that a year after one of the most shameful incidents in American sporting history, Billy Collins had a drunken car accident and lost his life.

Lance Armstrong Lost Everything

The use of various doping substances has never been far away from professional cyclists. There is evidence that some bikers used cocaine and steroids to overcome the difficult conditions as early as 1924. However, Lance Armstrong’s doping scandal left a mark in sporting history. Armstrong was a role model for many young athletes who embodied persistence and strength in people’s eyes. Armstrong not only fought with the mountains mercilessly but also with cancer.

 In 1996, he was diagnosed with testicular cancer, which also spread to his brain and lungs, but, miraculously, Armstrong recovered from it completely. His fame grew when he created an anti-cancer organization supporting those who suffer from the illness. According to 22Bet, his return to the competitions brought him unprecedented success, winning seven times between 1999 and 2005 at the biggest event in cycling, the Tour de France. 

Human greatness and incredible successes characterized Armstrong’s career during these times, which is also reflected in the fact that his biography books were best-sellers. After a break, he returned and managed to grab third place at the 2009 Tour de France. That time, not an illness but a legendary scandal ruined his career and everything in his life.

The Most Shameful Incidents in American Sporting History

The biggest doping scandal of the decade destroyed Armstrong’s name, career, and honor completely. In 2012, the USADA found that Armstrong had regularly used prohibited performance-enhancing drugs since 1996. USADA has also stripped Armstrong of all Tour de France titles and the 2000 Sydney Olympics bronze medal. They also banned him forever from the organization’s races. Check out the biggest ban scandals in sports history!

In addition, Armstrong has not only lost his athletic career, but his moral image has also crumbled. In the course of the investigations and testimonies, unbelievable factors came to light. They did not paint an image of a kind and helpful Armstrong but a selfish biker who climbed up on others for his own success. After one of the most shameful incidents in American sporting history, it was as if the world had never known him. However, he was not the only famous athlete to doped to win!

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