Worst act of cheating in sport

[CatInASuit]

Well, it looks as though two of the principles in the Renault team deliberately engineered a crash in the Singapore Grand Prix allowing their other driver to win the race.

Considering they changed the stop strategy of Alonso to provide maximum impact when Piquet Jr deliberately drove his car into the wall in an area that could not be quickly cleared, which ensured the safety car had to come out.

Why is this such a gross act of cheating? Because it could have cost not only Nelson Piquet Jr. his life, but those of other drivers and spectators as well.

It will be interesting to see what punishment is applied in this situation by the F1 authorities.

[OneCentStamp]

Is it the "deliberate" part of the crash that makes it cheating? I'm really ignorant of F1, but this just sounds like (dangerous) strategy.

[CatInASuit]

Apparently, the crash was a deliberate part of the strategy used for the other driver, Alonso.

Without the crash, there was no chance of Alonso winning the race.

[hatesfreedom]

That's just a beautiful loop hole they found there.

[OneCentStamp]

Maybe it just heralds a new era of team play in F1. I mean, why wouldn't a team do that? Cycling teams have their slower riders run interference for their fastest riders. This is just bigger and more dangerous.

[Exy]

Why is so awful? I don't really understand or watch car racing but my impression is that crashes are a pretty common occurrence.

[Sarahfeena]

Why is so awful? I don't really understand or watch car racing but my impression is that crashes are a pretty common occurrence.

Not usually done on purpose, I don't think.

[Exy]

Not usually done on purpose, I don't think.

No, but the idea that it's outrageous because it endangered drivers and spectators seems odd to me given that everyone present is in that danger already. It would expose me to danger if a three hundred pound man came up and leaped on me, driving me into the ground with all his might, but it happens to football players all the time.

[Sarahfeena]

No, but the idea that it's outrageous because it endangered drivers and spectators seems odd to me given that everyone present is in that danger already. It would expose me to danger if a three hundred pound man came up and leaped on me, driving me into the ground with all his might, but it happens to football players all the time.

Yeah, but even football has rules about what kind of contact you can have, to keep people from being killed. I don't think that crashing on purpose is within the guidelines of proper sportsmanship.

[CatInASuit]

No, but the idea that it's outrageous because it endangered drivers and spectators seems odd to me given that everyone present is in that danger already. It would expose me to danger if a three hundred pound man came up and leaped on me, driving me into the ground with all his might, but it happens to football players all the time.

Actually, the analogy is more like if someone at the Indy 500 deliberately drove into the crowd barrier to stop the race.

[ivan astikov]

I think F1 would be far more popular if it was like The Wacky Races, and anything goes!

[Xan]

I think F1 would be far more popular if it was like The Wacky Races, and anything goes!

I agree. More racing needs to be life Mario Kart or possibly Twisted Metal.

[Feirefiz]

Is it the "deliberate" part of the crash that makes it cheating? I'm really ignorant of F1, but this just sounds like (dangerous) strategy.

The official line is that the drivers in the same F1 team compete independently and thus against each other, just like everyone else. IMHO they should just drop that silly pretense because it never really works like that anyway.

[Elendil's Heir]

Well, this act of cheating wasn't potentially lethal, but it was a VERY big deal at the time: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hand_of...of_God.22_goal

[beebs]

Baseball has a general rule against "making a mockery of the game." While this racing stunt may have been strategy for one person to win the race, it diminishes the credibility of the racing sport.

I don't know about racing in Europe so much, but there are plenty of American meat-heads who have told me how they believe NASCAR is rigged like professional wrestling (I know, I know, there are plenty of NASCAR loving meat-heads as well).

It may have been a boon for the team that won, but it's a terrible precedent to go unpunished for the sport in general. If they'd like to consider themselves a professional sport. Otherwise it's just a fast moving demolition derby... which would probably sell tickets as well I suppose.

[Myrnalene]

For pure audaciousness it's hard to beat Frederick Lorz, who "won" the marathon at the 1904 Summer Olympics after his manager drove him eleven miles in his car. According the the linked article he admitted to it pretty quickly, though.

The most infamous marathon cheater is probably Rosie Ruiz who won the Boston Marathon by cutting in partway through the course. It was discovered that she had also cheated at the New York Marathon in order to "qualify" for the Boston race.

[jali]

Mike Tyson bit off a part of Evander Hollifield's ear. Pretty bad act just to win a fight.

[dread pirate jimbo]

Well, the worst act of cheating in sport, which is still a pretty hot topic 90 years after it happened, was the Chicago White Sox throwing the 1919 World Series. Eight Sox were subsequently banned for life, including Buck Weaver, who was guilty of knowing about the fix but not ratting out his teammates (his perfomance in that Series was nothing short of spectacular and eclipsed by only one man that year), and Joe Jackson, number three on the highest career batting averages list in MLB history, who took the money from the gamblers, then turned around and set a record for most hits in a World Series that would stand for several decades. Newly-appointed Commissioner Kennesaw Mountain Landis was a hard-liner and, subsequent to the trial of the "Eight Men Out" banned them all for life and set out the one and only inviolable rule in all of Major League Baseball, announcing that anyone who bets on baseball, conspires to throw a game, hangs out with gamblers who bet on baseball, or knows of a conspiracy to throw a game and says nothing will be banned from the game forever, period. * It was under this rule that Pete Rose would be banned from the game by Commissioner Bart Giamatti many years later.

* Landis would, in 1926, break his own rule and give Ty Cobb and Tris Speaker a free pass when it came out that they had bet on a fixed game in 1919. I guess he decided that there was a limit to how many future Hall of Famers he was prepared to throw out of the game.