News of the week: Cheating scandals have rocked the NBA, Major League Baseball and the Tour de France.
What the professor says: Sad to say, cheating is about as old as sport. If it is any comfort, referee Tim Donaghy and the suspected dopers of the Tour de France have some not-so-admirable company.
The favored tool of corruption in a world without performance-enhancing drugs was a performance-depressing bribe. One of the earliest documents from ancient Olympia, a bronze tablet broken off on the right side, lists a series of offenses such as “knowingly doing wrong” and taking money you shouldn’t.
A text inscribed on a stone found at the Greek city of Epidauros tells us that athletes found guilty of “damaging the games” in the foot race, pentathlon and pancration were all fined a fortune (these are plainly references to efforts at fixing the result).
One of the worst cases at Olympia involved the father of one finalist paying the father of another to convince his son to lose. Nor were athletes the only ones to cheat — in foot races, crooked refs could declare a close race a dead heat and, in one case, do so on multiple occasions until the guy who was supposed to win won.
Sadly, not even public humiliation served as an effective method of deterring cheaters.
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