Nine past scandals revisited after Manchester City commission finds sponsorship network a 'sham'
Manchester City being found guilty of fuelling an era of Premier League success via a network of sponsorship deals that an independent commission found to be a "sham" has shaken the world of sport, and BBC Sport has reviewed nine earlier scandals that similarly upended competitions and reputations.
Those episodes span more than a century and include doping, match-fixing, deliberate on-track sabotage, criminal assault, corporate corruption and the misuse of disability classifications at the Paralympics. The retrospective recounts cases from Lance Armstrong's stripped cycling titles to the Calciopoli telephone taps that sent Juventus to Serie B, highlighting the range of methods used to gain advantage or financial reward.
Lance Armstrong was stripped of the seven consecutive Tour de France titles he won between 1999 and 2005 after evidence and allegations from former team-mates; the piece recalls that Armstrong, a cancer survivor diagnosed at 25 when the disease had spread, built the Livestrong Foundation and sold millions of yellow wristbands before eventually confessing in an interview with Oprah Winfrey. His on-air admission included the words, "I made those decisions, they were my mistake and I'm here to say sorry," and he also said the culture in professional cycling made using drugs non-negotiable.
The McLaren report laid out the scale of state-sponsored manipulation at the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics, where organisers spent $50bn (£38bn) — more than 25 times Vancouver's 2010 outlay — and a system was created to replace tainted samples via a secret tunnel and a Russian secret service agent disguised as a sewer engineer. The method reportedly involved removing tamperproof lids to refill bottles with previously frozen, 'clean' urine; 43 Russian athletes were banned for life, 28 of whom successfully appealed against the full extent of their punishment, and Russia was banned from competing at the following Winter Olympics in South Korea although athletes who could demonstrate their clean record were permitted to compete under a neutral flag.
Hansie Cronje's fall from grace is recalled with details of his rise and collapse: President Nelson Mandela singled him out in 1996 for the "excellent manner" in which he captained the Proteas, yet Cronje accepted bribes, called team meetings to discuss throwing matches and contrived to lose a rain-affected Test against England in 2000 by persuading Nasser Hussein to forfeit an innings. Cronje was implicated after an Indian police wiretap caught discussions about fixing, he confessed in early 2000, was banned from cricket for life, and died in a plane crash two years later at the age of 32. The 1919 Chicago White Sox scandal is also detailed: under the headline "Say it ain't so Joe," eight players including Chick Gandil and Eddie Cicotte allegedly agreed to a $100,000 payment (about $1.6m today) to throw the World Series, Cicotte signalled the fix by deliberately hitting Maurice Rath, the White Sox lost 5-3 to the Cincinnati Reds, a criminal court failed to convict the players but they were banned from Major League Baseball for life, and Joe Jackson maintained until his death in 1951 that he had been deceived into signing a confession despite receiving $5,000.
The review covers deliberate race manipulation and stadium tampering: at the 2008 Singapore Grand Prix Nelson Piquet Jr later said he steered into a concrete wall at turn 17 of the Marina Bay Street Circuit on lap 14, an incident that deployed the safety car and benefited Renault team-mate Fernando Alonso, who had been the only frontrunner to stop for fuel and new tyres and went on to win; Renault initially said Piquet's claim was an attempt to blackmail them after he was dropped in 2009, and team principal Flavio Briatore and chief technical officer Pat Symonds were banned from Formula 1 for several years. The article also recounts the floodlight fraud at London grounds in 1997–98: after Frank Lampard's 65th-minute equaliser at Upton Park in November 1997 the stadium plunged into darkness, a similar outage occurred 13 seconds into the second half at Selhurst Park in December, and an Asian betting syndicate had used a remote-control circuit breaker and bribed a Charlton security guard before being foiled by a suspicious staff member; four men received prison terms of between 18 months and four years.
The Kerrigan-Harding affair and the Sydney Paralympics classification scandal are also featured: Nancy Kerrigan, aged 24, was struck on the leg with a telescopic baton while training in Detroit in January 1994 and was filmed repeatedly crying "why?" after the attack; the bodyguard and ex-husband of Tonya Harding hired the assailant in a bid to rule Kerrigan out of the Lillehammer Olympics, Kerrigan recovered to make the US team while Harding finished eighth in the Olympic final and was later banned for life after admitting she tried to conceal the assailant's identity, with Jeff Gillooly, the attacker and a getaway driver serving prison sentences. At the 2000 Paralympics Spain's intellectual disability basketball team included 10 of 12 players with no intellectual impairment, Spain beat Russia 87-63 in the final, Carlos Ribagorda — one of the ringers who was also a journalist — published an exposé on his return, the team were stripped of their gold medals and the incident prompted a total ban on athletes with an intellectual disability from the 2004 and 2008 Paralympics.
The Calciopoli scandal in Italy is outlined through the 2004 telephone taps that prosecutors intended for doping inquiries but which revealed alleged pressure from Juventus general manager Luciano Moggi on referees; Moggi denied the claims but Juventus, AC Milan, Fiorentina, Lazio and Reggina were implicated and given points deductions, with only Juventus relegated to Serie B. The probes precipitated a split in Juventus's squad — Zlatan Ibrahimovic and Patrick Vieira to Inter for a combined £23m, Fabio Cannavaro and Emerson to Real Madrid for £13.7m, Lilian Thuram and Gianluca Zambrotta to Barcelona for £13m, and Adrian Mutu to Fiorentina for £5.5m — while Gianluigi Buffon, Alessandro del Piero, Giorgio Chiellini, Pavel Nedved and David Trezeguet stayed with the club; despite a nine-point penalty and an opening-day draw with Rimini, Juventus won promotion at the first attempt and the club continues to count the 2004–05 and 2005–06 titles among its own total, maintaining a 38-title tally rather than the official 36.
The BBC compilation places the recent Manchester City commission finding alongside historical cases that resulted in removals of titles, lifetime bans, criminal sentences and Olympic bans, and notes concrete sanctions such as Russia's exclusion from the following Winter Olympics in South Korea while permitting individually cleared athletes to compete under a neutral flag.
