In the past months, the sports environment has been severely damaged by various scandals. Long-time legend and athletic icon Lance Armstrong was caught doping after many years of a successful career.
Other sports, such as soccer, are also facing problems. After conducting an investigation, European police, aka Europol, discovered a conspiracy between 2009 and 2011 where the games were fixed to influence the results of more than 380 games. Involved parties took advantage of the situation to earn money through online and telephone gambling.
As a person who enjoys sports, I feel let down. Aren’t sports supposed to encourage fair play and fair competition?
Armstrong was a cycling legend. He was an example of the spirit of perseverance and self-improvement. He fought testicular cancer and came back to win more Tour de France titles than anyone in history. Many people saw him as a role model and now they feel ashamed of him and his tricks that fooled everyone for so long.
When Armstrong was revealed as a cheater, it did great harm to the sport of cycling. This is a sport in which many participants are surrounded by doping suspicions. There have been several cases already. Now, anytime I watch any of the major cycling competitions, such as the Tour de France, the Vuelta a España or the Giro d’Italia, I wonder if the person wearing the first-place jersey is worthy of it, or if it will be just another case of doping.
On the other hand, the soccer scandal involves the collaboration of many people. The issue comes out of a corrupt gambling network coordinated from Singapore. According to the police, Austria, Slovenia, Hungary, Croatia, Turkey, Great Britain and Germany are among the countries in which a large amount of fixed games took place.
However, the fraudulent activities also reached Central and South America, Africa and Asia, where a large number of games are also being investigated.
The corrupt actions generated benefits of around $10.3 million). There were more than 400 people involved, including players, coaches and referees. Individual bribes were as much as $136,000.
It’s clear many involved were doing something illegal, unethical and deserving of punishment. But, for me, the hardest part is understanding why players are willing to do such things. What’s the point of faking their jobs? Aren’t their salaries high enough already? They earn extremely large amounts of money, which makes it even more unreasonable that they accept cheating for money. The compensation for cheating is a small number compared to their salary.
These examples illustrate two sports with current scandals, but they aren’t the only perpetrators in the sports community. I truly hope severe sanctions are imposed on the people involved, because they’re denigrating sports as a whole. Action needs to be taken in order to stop this and avoid such decadence. For some sports, it’s not too late. For others, such as cycling, it may be. In this case, cleaning house isn’t enough. They need to restructure and return outstanding sports to the respectable status they deserve.
