Sports History Biggest Cheaters and Their Cheats

Sports History Biggest Cheaters and Their Cheats: Sports are meant for sportsmanship,integrity and pride. But for one honorable way to go to success, there are lots of dirty ways to cheat to get success. There are so many cheats in sports history and even famous and biggest names are in the list of cheaters. Bad, ugly or just downright disgusting, everyone one of these names holds a dark place in our hearts. Their drive to win was insatiable; but their will to win far outweighed their respect for the sport and those who played. In the end they found a place a special place in the annals of history it’s just too bad it wasn’t the place they were hoping for. Here we take a look at the biggest cheaters in sports history.

Maradona's Famous ‘Hand of God’

The famous 1986 football world cup is unforgettable not only for Argentina as they win but also for England too. Its because England loose by 1 goal and that goal was a cheat. Easily one of the most famous cheat plays in sports history, Diego Maradona’s goal came six minutes into the second half of the 1986 World Cup quarter-final between England and Argentina. But his first goal will forever be remembered, as he reached a hand above his head to knock the ball into the net past England goalkeeper Peter Shilton. Maradona punched the ball into the goal with his left hand, and referee Ali Bin Nasser allowed it, not having seen the penalty.

The referee could not see it and missed the call and the goal stood as no TV replays available at that time. Maradona shrewdly described the goal as "a little with the head of Maradona and a little with the hand of God." He finally apologized in 2008, but it's unlikely that made the English feel better. Argentina would go on to win the 1986 World Cup, only increasing the significance of the wrongly allowed goal.

Mitchell Report All-Stars : The juicers

Mitchell Report investigates mainly on steroids and juices use in sports. George Mitchell's report on performance enhancing substance fingered All-Stars players. Sure, there's still all kinds of debate about who did, who didn't and what's proven, but what we do know is that the steroids era led to records as inflated as Barry Bonds' head and Mark Mcgwire admitting of using steroids.
Human growth hormone barry bonds head - Human Growth Hormone has been used by many athletes to boost their performance.The use of HGH is banned by the International Olympic Comittee, Major League Baseball and other pro sports leagues but many athletes still use it to increase performance. Human growth hormone is injected by athletes in order to increase muscle size.
Famous base ball player Barry Bonds used a vast array of performance-enhancing drugs including steroids and human growth hormone for at least five seasons beginning in 1998, according to a book written by two San Francisco Chronicle reporters. Maybe Barry Bonds can argue that weightlifting, not drugs, accounted for his weird, middle-aged home-run barrage and freaky body makeover, as he has maintained. He can argue (not convincingly) that bench press and shoulder shrugs enabled him to get so big that he went from a size 42 jersey to a size 52. But how does he explain this: His head grew from size 7 1/8 to 7 3/4. His feet grew from size 10 1/2 to size 13.There are a lot of exercises that make your muscles bigger, but there aren't any that increase the size of your head and feet.
Mark Mcgwire admits to using steroids- Famous baseball player Mark McGwire; who set a single-season record with 70 home runs in 1998, a feat that is credited with helping baseball rebound from the 1994 players' strike; admits last year that he used steroids in the 1989-90 offseason, 1993 and "on occasion throughout the nineties, including during the 1998 season" in a statement released by the St. Louis Cardinals.McGwire also used human growth hormone, a person close to McGwire said, speaking on condition of anonymity because McGwire didn't include that detail in his statement.

Chinese Olympic Gymnasts : Scandal of the ages

Three of Chinese women Olympic gymnasts -- Jiang Yuyuan, Yang Yilin and He Kexin who medaled at the Beijing 2008 Olympics, may in fact be only 14 years-old, when Olympic gymnasts are required to be 16 years-old, despite what Chinese Olympic officials said. The IOC stripped China's Dong Fangxiao of a medal from the 2000 Games because it was discovered that she was underage.
The age of China's gymnasts with a story that focused primarily on He Kexin, whose birthdate on numerous online records was listed as January 1, 1994, making her 14 when the Games began and ineligible to compete.

Dong Fangxiao only 14 at Olympic games -
Last year, the IOC resolved a decade-old scandal with its decision to strip China of a gymnastics bronze medal from the Sydney Olympics for fielding an under-age gymnast. China was stripped of a bronze medal from the 2000 Sydney Olympics for fielding an underage female gymnast, with the women's team medal now going to the United States.The International Olympic Committee acted after investigations by the sport's governing body determined that Dong Fangxiao was only 14 at the 2000 Games. Gymnasts must turn 16 during the Olympic year to be eligible.
Dong's results from Sydney were nullified in February by the International Gymnastics Federation. Because her scores contributed to China winning the team bronze, the FIG recommended the IOC take the medal back.As expected, the IOC executive board upheld the request and formally stripped the medal.The U.S. women, who had been fourth, move up to the bronze.
Women's Olympic gymnasts must be at least 16 - Women’s artistic gymnastics, often shortened to simply women’s gymnastics, is one of the most popular Olympic sports. As the name states, it has all-female participants, and gymnasts must be at least 16 years old by the end of the Olympic year in order to compete.

East German swim team : The Wonder Girls

Some of you may be a little too young to remember this, but you have probably heard jokes about the East German Women's Swim team. The East German women's swim team surprised the world when they suddenly dominated the sport during 1976 Olympics in Montreal, Canada. It turns out the women had been fed steroids and told they were vitamins. The muscularity of their female swimmers was so over the top, that people in the West were absolutely outraged that they could be so brazen as to load their swimmers up with steroids. There was never really an argument against it. It was always just assumed that they were on steroids.
1976 East German women's swim team wins 11 of 13 golds - Three letter - GDR - and one word - doping (not proven at the time, but now known as fact). In 1976 the East German team double their medals from the previous Olympics and the woman’s swim team dominated by taking 11 of the 13 golds in the sport, 6 of 11 silvers, and 1 bronze. These women continued to dominate the pool for almost twenty years. After the fall of the Berlin Wall, however, the truth about this sudden domination came out. The women on the team were being fed steroids and were being told they were vitamins.

'Spy-gate' : Bill Belichick and the Patriots

He may be one of football's most brilliant minds, but Bill Belichick isn't above a little cheating, as he showed in 2007, when the Pats were discovered to be videotaping the opponent's defensive coaches' signals during a game.
Belichick fined $500,000 for illegal videotaping - Belichick was hit with the largest fine ever imposed on an NFL coach. New England Patriots coach Bill Belichick was fined $500,000 for stealing an opponent's signals. Belichick and Patriots + Spygate was the term coined by the scandal.
Patriots fined $250,000 for illegal videotaping -The Pats also were fined. The Patriots penalized $250,000, plus the loss of their first-round draft pick. The Pats taped the team of New York Jets.

Ben Johnson : Disgraced Champion

The disgraced Seoul Olympics 100m champion claims to have proof that his drink was spiked with the banned steroid Stanozolol just before he went in for urine testing after his Olympic triumph. The Canadian sprinter demolished a field that included Carl Lewis and Linford Christie to win the gold medal at the 1988 Seoul Olympics in a world-record time.
stanozolol + anabolic steroid -Just three days later, however, his gold medal and world record were stripped and he was sent home from the Games after testing positive for the banned steroid, stanozolol. Johnson returned to the sport in 1991, but he was found guilty of doping in 1993 and banned for life by the IAAF.
Ben Johnson wins gold in 100 meters at 88 Olympics -In 1988, Canadian sprinter Ben Johnson runs the 100-meter dash in 9.79 seconds to win gold at the Summer Olympics in Seoul, South Korea.

Marion Jones : Not quite in ‘the clear’

One of the most dominant Olympic sprinters in history, Marion Jones won five medals at the 2000 Summer Olympics in Sydney, Australia, but forfeited all medals and prizes dating back to September 2000 after her October 2007 admission that she took performance-enhancing drugs as far back as the 2000 Summer Olympics, and that she had lied about it to a grand jury investigating performance-enhancer creations by Victor Conte and the Bay Area Laboratory Co-operative.
The clear + steroid - She denied using performance-enhancing drugs for years until 2007, when she confessed to using this designer steroid from September 2000 to July 2001. She also pleaded guilty to lying to federal agents investigating BALCO and tearfully apologized outside a courthouse. Jones gave back the five medals she won at the Sydney Olympics, and the IOC wiped her name from its record books.
Marion Jones wins three golds and two bronzes at Olympics - In Sydney, Jones told the press that she was aiming for five gold medals. As it was considered a possibility by fans and pundits alike, she was a media darling during the Olympics. However, she finished with three golds and two bronzes, still an astonishing feat which had never been achieved by a female athlete before. She was later stripped of these medals after admitting that she used performance-enhancing drugs at the time.

Mike Tyson : The biter

Michael Gerard "Mike" Tyson, now known as Malik Abdul Aziz after embracing islam, is a retired American boxer. Tyson is a former undisputed heavyweight champion of the world and holds the record as the youngest boxer to win the WBC, WBA and IBF world heavyweight titles, he was 20 years, 4 months and 22 days old. On June 28, 1997, boxing heavyweights Evander Holyfield and Mike Tyson met in the ring for the second time. Their first match, seven months earlier, hadn't ended well for Tyson.
Mike Tyson bites holyfield's right ear -In Holyfield-Tyson II, Iron Mike was hungry for redemption - and also for cartilage, apparently. In a tie-up with Holyfield in Round 3, Tyson bit Holyfield. The fight was allowed to continue, and so was Tyson's feeding frenzy. He next bit Holyfield's left ear. Amazingly, the fight wasn't stopped until after the round had ended and Tyson had charged Holyfield's corner. Only then was Iron Mike disqualified.

Rosie Ruiz : Taking us for a ride

Rosie Ruiz Vivas is a Cuban American who in 1980 was initially declared the first place winner in the female category for the 84th Boston Marathon only to have her title later stripped after it was discovered that she had not run the entire course. The unknown Rosie Ruiz won the 1980 Boston Marathon by coming out of nowhere. Literally. OK, not literally, but race officials later determined Ruiz did not run the whole race. Instead, they said she came out of the crowd about a mile from the finish, crossed the line and pretended to have won. A subsequent investigation showed that, during the 1979 New York Marathon, Ruiz short-circuited her way to the finish line with the qualifying time she needed to run in Boston. Ruiz was disqualified, giving the Boston victory to Jacqueline Gareau.

Danny Almonte : The ringer

Born April 7, 1987 is an assistant baseball coach at James Monroe High School in New York City. Almonte was born in Moca, Dominican Republic. A former Little League pitcher, he became the subject of considerable media attention in 2001. Considered a phenomenon as he led his Bronx team to a third-place finish in the 2001 Little League World Series, Almonte was revealed to have actually been two years too old to play Little League baseball. Although there were many allegations during the 2001 Series, the truth was not revealed until weeks later.
The 12-year-old Danny Almonte set the Little League World Series alight in 2001 with 70 mph fastballs and a perfect game. There was one big problem, though: Almonte, the star of the Rolando Paulino Little League All-Stars from Bronx, N.Y., wasn't 12. He was 14, too old to compete at the LLWS. The discovery nullified the third-place finish by his team and left his father facing criminal charges, Danny Almonte's father charged with falsifying birth records, little league world series maximum age limit 13

Tonya Harding : If you can't beat 'em, beat 'em

Tonya Maxine Harding born November 12, 1970 is an American figure skating champion. In 1991 she won the U.S. Figure Skating Championships and placed second in the World Championships. She was the second woman, and the first American woman, to complete a triple axel jump in competition.
She became notorious after her ex-husband, Jeff Gillooly, conspired with Shawn Eckhardt and Shane Stant to attack her skating competitor Nancy Kerrigan at a practice session during the 1994 U.S. Figure Skating Championships.
Oh, Tonya. Once a championship-level figure skater in the early 1990s national title did she win Tonya Harding +won 1991 U.S. Figure Skating Championship, she failed to medal at the 1992 Olympics, and by 1993 her career was in decline. Nobody saw coming what happened next: Rival Nancy Kerrigan was attacked by a man hired by Harding's ex-husband during a practice at the 1994 U.S. Championships. Harding and Kerrigan both made the Olympic team as bitter teammates. Harding admitted to covering up the attack, but her lawyers' legal threats saved her spot. Later in 1994, she was banned for life by the U.S. Figure Skating Association, relegating her to a shamed career full of reality TV and low-level women's boxing events. Jeff Gillooly prison sentence

Floyd Landis : Liar, liar

Floyd Landis born October 14 1975 is an American cyclist, now best remembered because of the Tour de France 2006 doping scandal. He is a time-trial specialist and a strong climber. Landis turned professional in 1999 with the Mercury Cycling Team. He joined the US Postal Service team in 2002, and moved to the Phonak Hearing Systems team in 2005.
He had reached the top of his sport, winning pro cycling's treasure in 2006, the Tour de France. Only two other American cyclists, greg lemond and lance armstrong only 2 americans to win tour de france, had ever won the event. However, Landis was stripped of his title and banned from the sport due to a positive test for performance-enhancing drugs. The disgraced rider was vehement in his defense, sparking his own multiple legal challenges until finally admitting in 2010 that he had lied all along, Floyd Landis banned from cycling for two years.
Floyd landis accuses lance armstrong of doping