Corruption In Sport
What is your thoughts on Corruption in sport? Is it of concern? I believe that it is completely and utterly wrong and is ruining the much loved sports that millions of people participate in worldwide. Three of the biggest examples that show the corruption in sport debacle are Lance Armstrong who used drugs to help him win the Tour de France multiple times. Jack Warner, a man who stole $750,000 from the FIFA Board and the South Korea Football Association, lastly Chris Cairns who was caught out for match fixing multiple cricket games.
Using drugs to improve your skills and increase your chances of winning in sports is wrong. This is exactly what Lance Armstrong did, who was known as the greatest cyclist to ever compete in the world race called the Tour de France. A seven time winner who for all of his victories, was a cheat. Several times he was accused of cheating with the use of performance enhancing drugs but pleaded innocent to all of them.”As long as I live, I will deny taking performance-enhancing drugs.” [1.] Lance Armstrong said this for years and years until 2013. In this year, he confessed that he had used the drugs to help him achieve all his victories in the Tour de France. This doping act spread around the world very quickly and it caused the world to have a lot of hatred for Lance. He confessed to the use of erythropoietin, a human growth hormone, and blood doping. This was along with using false documents to show that he had passed the drug test so he would not be caught out. This has to stop. I strongly believe that this is wrong and has put a massive anti doping system in cycling and other sports which should not be required. People should not be using performance enhancing drugs to help them win. They need to learn how to win while doing it fairly and not against the law, in order to keep a sense of achievement in winning a title. Drug doping plays a huge part in corruption in sport and, in my opinion, anyone who is caught in the act of cheating should be banned for life from the sport and be jailed for a fair amount of time.
Another huge corruption case in sport is the Jack Warner scandal. A former vice president of the FIFA (International Federation of Association Football) board was accused of stealing $750,000 from FIFA and the South Korea Football Association. This money was intended for the Haiti Victims Relief Fund after they were destroyed by an earthquake in 2010. Warner took the money and deposited it into 75 personally controlled bank accounts for his own keeping. This has caused massive debates amongst the FIFA panel. Although Warner has resigned, it still needs the authorities to take extreme action to try and recover the missing money and to this day, they still have not received it. The Haiti victims were distraught as it caused them to struggle even more in their effort for survival post the earthquake. “Given Warner’s power in Trinidad, he could get transactions done that a regular person would not,” [2.] this quote shows the powers that Warner had which enabled him to do these deposits into his own bank accounts. He was a well known man and a person that was looked up to in the FIFA committee, until this allegation of him money laundering. I strongly disagree with what Jack Warner has done. Not only has he committed crimes for stealing money but he had also taken away money from people that are in serious need of it, ruining their lives even more. I also believe that the authorities who are still on this case need to work harder to get the money retrieved, and then put Warner into jail for the rest of his life because of the suffering he has caused. This is turing into one of the worlds’ biggest sport corruption cases as the money has still not been found to this day.
The third major corruption case that affected a sport dramatically is when Chris Cairns allegedly match fixed cricket games in the Indian Premier League (IPL). Chris Cairns is a former Blackcaps player and was known around the world as a great one. Cairns bribed some of the younger stars to do certain things during the game, such as score five runs or less in an innings which is what this case was about. The outbreak of information reporting Chris Cairns was on a Twitter post from Lalit Modi accusing him of match fixing. Cairns denied all allegations made against him and attempted to sue everyone who had gone against him. “I have never match-fixed, sought to have others match-fix, or otherwise played the game of cricket in anything other than the spirit it so richly deserves to be played in.”[3.] Chris Cairns said this while the allegations had all been made against him but for him to say it in this way made me believe that Chris Cairns was guilty of match fixing, also because he was known for going into depression and was known as a person who ‘sadly charts the downfall of a once great player’. Match fixing is wrong! I strongly agree with everyone who says it is wrong. It is ruining the sport as we know it today if people continue to shape games around how they want the result to end up. I feel as though match fixing is disgraceful, unfair, and shameful towards whoever is involved in the situation. In my opinion, if I was a player who was bribed to perform an action or doing something specifically for money because my coach or anyone else asked me to, then i would immediately go to the Anti-Corruption agency for the specific sport and get it sorted out straight away. Cairns faces his final court hearing during October 2015 about the allegations made against him, whether they are true or not. I believe they are true. This shows that Chris Cairns is a major name of someone who had affected the outcome of a game and will always be known as someone who caused a massive corruption in sport, in his case for the sport of cricket.
I love sport and it saddens me that some of my role models have turned out to be so corrupt. Corruption in sport has to stop before it ruins the sport even more. Lance Armstrong, Jack Warner and Chris Cairns are three of the main culprits of corrupting different sports. There are others in the world that also need to stop, even if it is on a much smaller scale compared to these three. The alleged people should all serve jail time for what they have caused and they need to be punished for ruining sports as we currently know them. What do you think should happen to people involved in corruption cases?
By Ryan Le Poidevin
[1.] http://www.theguardian.com/sport/2013/jan/18/lance-armstrong-doping-denials-quotes
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