Great Sporting Scandals Quiz | Wide World of Sports

Quiz Answer Key and Fun Facts

1. 'Citius, Altius, Fortius' or 'faster, higher, stronger' is the noble Olympic motto. On the subject of 'Citius' (with apologies to Latin teachers everywhere), which of these Olympic 100m gold medal track speedsters was not banned for the use of performance enhancing drugs?

Answer: Donovan Bailey - Canada

In 1988 Seoul gold medallist Ben Johnson famously went from 'Hero to Zero' in 9.79 seconds, yielding his prize to Carl Lewis of the USA. The 1992 Barcelona gold medallist, Linford Christie, ended his career with a 2 year ban for taking performance enhancing substances. The 2004 Athens gold medallist, Justin Gatlin, was banned for 8 years for testing positive to 'testosterone or its precursor'.

Only the 1996 Atlanta gold medallist, Donovan Bailey, tested clean through to retirement, perhaps a legacy of Canadian shame in the aftermath of the Ben Johnson scandal.

2. Sometimes known as "the good old days of gallant Olympic sporting endeavours": approximately what percentage of 1972 Olympic athletes admitted to steroid use according to a 2006 survey?

Answer: 68%

Over two thirds of athletes in the survey group from 8 countries - Canada, England, Egypt, Morocco, New Zealand, Russia and USA - admitted juicing with drugs. Set against a backdrop of dodgy judging decisions, a Rhodesian sports ban and an appalling act of anti-Israeli terrorism, it is sadly fitting that these games were no cleaner than their more modern counterparts.

3. 'Say it ain't so Joe' is a quote associated to a scandal in which sport?

Answer: Baseball

The infamous 'Black Sox' scandal was encapsulated in this immortal quote. 'Shoeless Joe' Jackson was emerging from a courthouse on charges that he and his Chicago White Sox team-mates conspired to fix the results of the 1919 World Series for a gambling syndicate. A young fan cut to the soul of sporting morality with his heartfelt question.
The notorious eight players were ultimately acquitted, but served life bans in the fallout from the scandal. 'Shoeless Joe' never played in the major leagues again, and died in 1951, aged 63.

4. The New York long distance runner Rosie Ruiz was quite an unusual athlete. She won the 1980 Boston Marathon in the 3rd fastest time ever recorded for a female runner (two hours, 31 minutes, 56 seconds). She also achieved a qualifying time for her previous event, the New York Marathon, by what innovative means?

Answer: She took the subway

The two-time cheater is believed to have caught the New York subway and saved all that huffing, puffing and sweating. This gave her a smooth and punctual qualifying time to the Boston Marathon, which she subsequently 'won'. Eyewitnesses to the Boston Marathon came forward to say they saw Ruiz join the race during the final half mile.

She was disqualified and the title was awarded to an actual runner, Jacqueline Gareau.

5. The upstanding and gentlemanly game of cricket: Hansie Cronje, the South African team captain, was disgraced as a result of what event?

Answer: Match fixing

The gambling syndicates strike again - Hansie was convicted by the King Commission of receiving gifts and money from bookmakers to fix the results of games and was banned for life. Poor Hansie was indeed a fine cricketer, with 3,714 test runs at the impressive batting average of 36.41, even though he undercooked a few games. Hansie was killed in a plane crash in 2002.

Despite the match fixing scandal, public sentiment remained with Hansie and he was voted the 11th greatest South African in 2004.

6. What was the name of the company associated with so-called 'designer steroids', chemicals that are undetectable to drug testing methods?

Answer: BALCO

The Bay Area Laboratory Co-operative was raided by police in 2003. Designer drugs called 'The Cream' and 'The Clear' are alleged have been used by an array of elite US sports stars. The fine investigative book 'Game of Shadows' implicates baseballers' Barry Bonds and Jason Giambi, the sprinter Marion Johnson and NFL linebacker Bill Romanowski, amongst others.

7. Something non-chemical: which footballer's infamous 'Hand of God' consigned the English soccer team to another four years of brooding over why they hadn't won the World Cup since 1966?

Answer: Diego Maradona

The world champion Argentinean footballer illegally used his hand to assist the ball in to the back of the English net, to provide one of the two goals he scored to help Argentina defeat England 2-1 in the 1986 World Cup. Maradona's eventful life post 'Hand of God' include failed drug tests, a gun incident, cocaine addiction, stomach stapling and a hate-filled public commentary about his North American neighbours.

8. The 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City were marred by which icy sporting debacle?

Answer: Skategate

'Skategate' erupted when the seemingly flawless pairs routine of Jamie Sal� and David Pelletier of Canada was beaten by the stumbled routine of Yelena Berezhnaya and Anton Sikharulidze of Russia. A subsequent inquiry revealed that one of the French judges had yielded to voting pressure from Russia, in return for a similar favour for French competitors.

The International Skating Union subsequently barred the French judges and awarded equal gold medals to the Canadian pair.

9. The cheating vein: which country's basketball team was expelled from the 2000 games in Sydney, even though no competitor tested positive for drugs? In fact, most of the competitors' tests were completely 'normal'.

Answer: Spain

The Spanish Basketball team at the 2000 Paralympics capped a new low in the realm of sports cheating - the Spanish Federation had signed non-disabled basketballers in order to 'win medals and gain more sponsorship'. Subsequent tests revealed that 10 of the 12 competitors in the winning team were not intellectually disabled.

In the fallout from this outrageous cheating episode, intellectually disabled athletes were disbarred from subsequent Paralympics.

10. The origins of sport, the ancient Greek Olympics: those fine sculpted athletes competed between 776BC and 390AD - whoa - that's over a thousand years' of Olympics. And they often competed buck naked. Did they use performance enhancing substances way back then?

Answer: Yes

The Greeks used a wide variety of artificial potions to get ahead, including chewing up animal hearts, wine concoctions, psychedelic mushrooms and even sheep and bull testicles. In AD 76, the fiddling fop Emperor Nero bribed the judges to include poetry reading as a sport, and 'won' the chariot competition, despite falling out of his chariot. Alas sports fans, it seems that cheating is indeed as old as sport.

Source: Author fijikiwi

This quiz was reviewed by FunTrivia editor gtho4 before going online.
Any errors found in FunTrivia content are routinely corrected through our feedback system.

Great Sporting Scandals Trivia Quiz

This is the sporting Hall of Shame - the dopers, cheaters and tricksters of world sport.

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