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glowing-fish
Feb 18, 2013

Keep grinding,
I hope you level up! :)
The other day, I learned the story of Roberto Rojas and the 1989 World Cup match between Chile and Brazil. During a loud match in Brazil, someone (namely future Playboy covergirl Rosenery Mello de Nascimento) threw a flare onto the pitch, leading to the goalkeeper Roberto Rojas writhing on the ground, and needing to be taken off the field with a serious injury. His team, protesting the unsafe conditions, left the field, which could have led to Brazil forfeiting the match, or the match being played at a more favorable venue.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JuDIzR00JWE


If you know anything about football, or if you watch the video, you might be wondering how a flare a meter away could have led to such a pained reaction. As it came out, the flare never hit Rojas. Instead, he had cleverly hidden a razor blade in his glove, because if there happened to be any fireworks on the field, he could then cut himself, and force a forfeit. After a bit of investigation, this was disovered, and Rojas, the team coach, and the team doctor were banned for life (Rojas was reinstated much later) and the Chilean team was banned from the 1994 World Cup.

What sets this apart is the cleverness and careful planning of the ploy, combined with the absolute loving stupidity of faking an injury on tape and not thinking other people would figure it out.
(Welcome to Chile)

This got me to thinking: what are the great moments in sports cheating? Cheating is pretty common in sports, but often it is cheating somewhat within the rules (flopping isn't cheating, and neither is hard fouling etc). What are examples of intricate and outrageous cheating, from different sports? Probably many of these occurred in sports and areas that might be obscure to the average United States sports fan, (how does one even cheat in Cricket?) so it will be interesting to see all the different examples of cheating.

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glowing-fish
Feb 18, 2013

Keep grinding,
I hope you level up! :)
And we have to post this, although this is probably known to everyone here already:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tonya_Harding#Attack_on_Nancy_Kerrigan_and_aftermath

In preparation for the 1994 Winter Olympics, Tonya Harding's husband hired someone to break rival Nancy Kerrigan's leg (its still not clear how much Tonya Harding knew about it). It didn't take long to see who had the most motive for having Kerrigan out of the way, and it didn't take long to figure out who had the most motive for the attack. It was sad because Tonya was a talented skater, was young and probably was under the influence of her husband. Even if she had lost at the Olympics, she had a long career ahead of her, but because of the attack, she was banned for life from skating. Like many types of cheating, it was a combination of clever and stupid. It also was one of the things responsible for figure skating becoming the focus of the Winter Olympics.

Rotten Cookies
Nov 11, 2008

gosh! i like both the islanders and the rangers!!! :^)

Can't find a video of it, but it sticks out in my head.

Winning faceoffs in hockey can be important, and if you try cheating, the ref will kick you out and make your teammate take the faceoff instead. Presumably your teammate isn't as good as you at faceoffs. Henrik and Daniel Sedin are creepy, psychic, ginger twins on the Canucks. One of them gets kicked out of the faceoff circle, and they do a little skating around, as the original guy comes back to the dot to take the faceoff.

Just the fact that it was done so seamlessly and it worked. I love it.

Stiev Awt
Mar 20, 2007


Rotten Cookies posted:

Can't find a video of it, but it sticks out in my head.

Winning faceoffs in hockey can be important, and if you try cheating, the ref will kick you out and make your teammate take the faceoff instead. Presumably your teammate isn't as good as you at faceoffs. Henrik and Daniel Sedin are creepy, psychic, ginger twins on the Canucks. One of them gets kicked out of the faceoff circle, and they do a little skating around, as the original guy comes back to the dot to take the faceoff.

Just the fact that it was done so seamlessly and it worked. I love it.

Here they are admitting to it on (Canadian) national TV. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ehuJUPpKhXs&t=279s

DJExile
Jun 28, 2007


lmao i love that sedin thing


Also some of you racing peeps get in here and tell us about all the poo poo Smokey Yunick pulled :munch:

glowing-fish
Feb 18, 2013

Keep grinding,
I hope you level up! :)

Stiev Awt posted:

Here they are admitting to it on (Canadian) national TV. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ehuJUPpKhXs&t=279s

I wonder if the Morris twins ever tried that when they were both playing for the Phoenix Suns. We would never know!

DJExile
Jun 28, 2007


quote:

"Ninety percent of the so-called cheating that was innovated, it wasn’t cheating," Yunick said, citing as an example a Chevrolet he entered at the Daytona 500 in 1968. "There was no rule on how big the gas line could be. Everyone else ran a 5/8-inch gas line. That was adequate to supply the race engine with gas, no question about it. I chose to run a two-inch gas line, which was obviously much too big, but it was 11 feet long and it held five gallons of gas. Nobody ever [specified size]. A week after the race, the gas line couldn’t be over a half-inch in diameter. The day that I did it, it was not illegal. That’s how most all these innovations €”so-called cheating” was not cheating the day it was done."

quote:

"All of a sudden, the first time I saw the car, I thought, the car is awful small. The Chevelle, an intermediate-sized production car, was smaller than the full-size Ford Galaxie and the Dodges and Plymouths that were running. But Smokey’s car didn’t look like it was as big as the Chevelles I’d seen.

"In practice it didn’t really do much. Here comes pole day, and he wins the pole. This would be like a Peugeot coming in and winning the pole today in a stock-car race. It was such a shock. It was so embarrassing to the factory teams. I have never seen longer faces in my life at a racetrack, other than when somebody’s killed, than at Daytona that day. NASCAR scrambled all around trying to find out who did what to whom, how did that drat thing get on the pole? It comes time for the qualifying races. Curtis on the pole and they drop the flag. He developed a mysterious smoke coming out of the car on the first lap. I guess Smokey said it was a blown engine or a leaky oil line. I suspect that he didn’t want to show his hand. He knew that NASCAR was after him big time. The car didn’t win the race, but probably in the history of stock-car racing there was never a bigger upset than what happened that day."

Yunick found an obvious loophole: NASCAR didn’t measure how wide the car was, so he narrowed it. A narrower car pushes less air and, all other things being equal, it will be faster than a wider car.

"What did Smokey do with the car? He just made a small Chevelle out of it and took advantage of something nobody paid much attention to in those days, and that was aerodynamics,’ said Wheeler. "It was less to move through the air. He had the fabulous ability to get more horsepower out of an engine than anybody else on Earth could. So the combination was earth shattering. As a matter of fact, that car was held in such high esteem as the ultimate cheater that it was sold for way up in the six figures at a collector car auction in Phoenix a couple of years ago. Somehow or other it miraculously showed up. Smokey verified to me that that was the Daytona car. It would be interesting to get that car and find out what size it really was."

Smokey Yunick owned.

Kibner
Oct 21, 2008

#1 Pelican Fan
Anyone have a link to Pony Excess documentary? Because, yeah, that was pretty hilariously blatant cheating.

DJExile
Jun 28, 2007


Kibner posted:

Anyone have a link to Pony Excess documentary? Because, yeah, that was pretty hilariously blatant cheating.

Here ya go

iospace
Jan 19, 2038


So, Toyota. Up to the early 2000s, they were making some pretty sweet driver's cars. Naturally, some of their cars were in motorsport, and rally was no different. In rally, because of the use of I4s, each car had a turbocharger on it, and each one had a restrictor plate on it to limit boost for safety purposes (see Group B if you want to know what happens with unchecked power on rally courses). Toyota figured out how to bypass it by moving the turbo inlet around by having a cuff on the hose connected to it move the inlet itself. The result? 50 more HP compared to everyone else (the cars were making ~300 HP each at the time). They almost got away with it too, because when the hose was removed, it looked legal, and passed inspection many, many times. The FIA president, while handing down a year ban from WRC, said “It’s the most ingenious thing I have seen in 30 years of motorsport.”

http://blackflag.jalopnik.com/how-the-best-racing-cheat-of-all-time-worked-1792828060

DJExile
Jun 28, 2007


Oh my god that's beautiful

Aye Doc
Jul 19, 2007



the best kinds of cheating are those that fail spectacularly or succeed immensely. I guess in this post, I will be discussing some of the few true divine moments of cheating - the ones that succeed and fail to all-time great levels.


Rosie Ruiz's 2:31:56 time in the 1980 Boston Marathon would have been the third best marathon time for a woman ever, and the best time for a woman in the Boston Marathon ever. it was an improvement of about 25 minutes over her time in the New York Marathon earlier, which is an incredible leap. she would have been an inspirational story, an out-of-shape non-runner who managed to run the best 26 miles in female marathon history. if only she hadn't dipped into the crowd like half a mile in and re-emerge just before the finish line. she was questioned about a bunch of different things - her splits, what she remembered from running through a certain area and her conspicuously forgetting about the thousands of screaming Wesleyan University students, and a bunch of other very obvious basic running details a marathon runner breaking world records would probably know. she was still adamant she ran the marathon as of sometime in the 2000s, I don't know if she still is.


jeez, cheating can get you gold medals too! for a minute anyway. this is from the 2000 Paralympic Games where Spain's gold in basketball was overturned when they found out 10 of their 12 players were not disabled. if you ain't cheating to win the intellectual disability gold medals, you ain't trying. they were brought down by an undercover journalist who found out that they weren't doing the proper testing to guarantee the athletes were below 70 IQ. they got them all fake medical certificates to qualify. in their game against China and leading by 30, their coach told them to turn it down a notch before they figured out they weren't all handicapped.

I was originally going to post about cheating as in PEDs, but that seems lame. so this will not be a discussion about all the cool people who have used steroids and testosterone replacement therapy to great, hilarious, and brutal effect. I will pay homage to them all briefly - Barry Bonds and his many dingers, Vitor Belfort's permanently disfiguring high kick developed from his insanely hot freakish bod[url], Alistair Overeem's [url=https://i.imgur.com/EyAWwLul.jpg]mutant neck muscles and abs-on-abs-on-abs, and I'm sure a bunch of other dudes. with that out of the way, we can talk about a drug cheater's other hilarious ways of cheating and deceit/


Alex Rodriguez is the coolest baseball player there ever was, because cheating is cool and lying is cool and so is wanting to be a buff half-unicorn. remember the time he slapped the ball away from Bronson Arroyo?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xQyY-azd2vk
look at Jetes hustling. what a classy, upstanding, hard-nosed, gritty, blue collar player right there. remember when A-Rod let everyone know he got it?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x9NSSCzrnRw

and then it pissed off Joe Torre! "I don't sense he's going to do it again." I would have loved to be in the locker room to hear that ridiculous dressing down. baseball's ability to suppress all that is cool and good about its players is second only to hockey's. anyway, more A-Rod, the best cheater in the game. he divorced from his wife after he was alleged to be cheating on her with Madonna in 2008. and while I'm not sure if he was in a relationship in 2012, but flirting with fans in the stands while losing in the playoffs and having a bat boy throw a ball to one of them so they could exchange phone numbers is definitely a top 10 sports trick of all time.

DJExile
Jun 28, 2007


I remember seenig a quote from Earl Weaver who said he loved A-Rod doing that "I GOT IT!" call, and that he'd tell guys to throw phantom CUT OFF THE THROW calls out there when they were trying to score.

seiferguy
Jun 9, 2005

FLAWED
INTUITION



Toilet Rascal
Tom Brady once deflated some footballs.

seiferguy
Jun 9, 2005

FLAWED
INTUITION



Toilet Rascal
In all seriousness, though, the most accomplished cheater in baseball was probably Gaylord Perry. He used the spitball to extend his career like crazy. It wasn't just spit that he used. He used KY jelly, vaseline, and various other stuff on the ball. He used to load his glove up with rosin so that when he released the ball, a puff of smoke would show up and confuse the batter. He didn't get caught for it until 1982, a year before he retired.

For all his cheating, he's enshrined in the hall of fame. He also thinks steroid users shouldn't be in the hall.

iospace
Jan 19, 2038


Anyone who uses the knuckleball cheats.

And then anyone who catches those devilish pitches.

glowing-fish
Feb 18, 2013

Keep grinding,
I hope you level up! :)

seiferguy posted:

Tom Brady once deflated some footballs.

So did the New York Knicks, although they were just bending the rules, not breaking them:

http://www.sportingnews.com/nba/news/deflategate-phil-jackson-new-york-knicks-deflate-basketball-championship/zz8iv7k1gy4uzr7kfh3kec0j

Even the Patriots deflategate, if true, would have been pretty pedestrian, as far as cheating goes.

Leperflesh
May 17, 2007

I listened to this Radiolab recently:
http://www.radiolab.org/story/lose-lose/

It's about a situation that arose in a 2012 Olympic badminton match, where basically both sides tried to cheat in exactly the same way, by intentionally throwing the match. It raises the questions of whether it was really cheating at all, and also whether athletes have an obligation to "try to win" a match when losing it is a better outcome for them.

What I found really beautiful is that after initially being way too obvious about trying to lose, and getting cautioned by officials, the match devolved into both sides trying to lose while trying to make it look like they weren't trying to lose.

Ultimately, both four teams were disqualified.

http://www.cnn.com/2012/08/01/sport/olympics-badminton-scandal/

Leperflesh fucked around with this message at 00:45 on Mar 16, 2017

glowing-fish
Feb 18, 2013

Keep grinding,
I hope you level up! :)
Like this is something that makes me shake my head and go "WTF?"...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horse_murders

A conspiracy of people had wealthy show horses killed so they could collect insurance money, and along the way, they often used gigolos to seduce wealthy widows and then sell them horses to kill. Or something. And at least one of those widows was probably killed.

It would be interesting if anyone had more information on this...I am just looking at wikipedia links.

glowing-fish
Feb 18, 2013

Keep grinding,
I hope you level up! :)

Leperflesh posted:

I listened to this Radiolab recently:
http://www.radiolab.org/story/lose-lose/

It's about a situation that arose in a 2012 Olympic badminton match, where basically both sides tried to cheat in exactly the same way, by intentionally throwing the match. It raises the questions of whether it was really cheating at all, and also whether athletes have an obligation to "try to win" a match when losing it is a better outcome for them.

What I found really beautiful is that after initially being way too obvious about trying to lose, and getting cautioned by officials, the match devolved into both sides trying to lose while trying to make it look like they weren't trying to lose.

Ultimately, both four teams were disqualified.

http://www.cnn.com/2012/08/01/sport/olympics-badminton-scandal/

Similar story from the NBA, but for different reasons:

http://www.oregonlive.com/blazers/index.ssf/2011/11/trail_blazers_history_portland.html

Basically the coach of the Denver Nuggets was so mad at his team for playing bad defense that he told them to not even try, and let Portland reach a high score record. He was fined for the NBA for "making a mockery of the game".

I don't know if that is cheating, but it is funny.

BrigadierSensible
Feb 16, 2012

I've got a pocket full of cheese🧀, and a garden full of trees🌴.

"Underarm"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Underarm_bowling_incident_of_1981

My dad was at the game, and he swears that he called it when he saw Greg Chappell talking to Rod Marsh behind the stumps and Rod shaking his head. But Greg being captain had the last say and forced little brother Trevor, (the worst of the Chappells ) to bowl the ball.

Australia New Zealand relations have never been the same.

Leperflesh
May 17, 2007

In the 1976 Montreal Olympics, a Russian pentathlete was caught cheating in the fencing portion of the event.

In modern fencing, an electric circuit is closed when the fencer's sword makes a legal contact, causing a light to light up. To make the system work, the sword has to be "plugged in" to a dongle at the fencer's wrist. Boris Onischenko apparently modified his sword so that he could complete or sever the connection secretly, possibly with a hidden switch or loose contact. He was caught when his light went off in between bouts; this happens all the time, because the systems are finicky, but fencers have a right to request their opponent switches swords, which his opponent did. The Olympic officials later examined his sword and discovered his cheat.

The thing is, he was a much better fencer than his opponent and still won easily.

Boris Onischenko more or less vanished from the sport, and was directly yelled at by Leonid Brezhnev, which must have been terrifying, and then permanently barred from sports in Soviet Russia.

https://www.pastemagazine.com/articles/2016/06/olympic-oddities-the-dis-onischenko-incident-of-mo.html

Leperflesh
May 17, 2007

BrigadierSensible posted:

"Underarm"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Underarm_bowling_incident_of_1981

My dad was at the game, and he swears that he called it when he saw Greg Chappell talking to Rod Marsh behind the stumps and Rod shaking his head. But Greg being captain had the last say and forced little brother Trevor, (the worst of the Chappells ) to bowl the ball.

Australia New Zealand relations have never been the same.

I read the article and it sounds like it was totally legal play, e.g. they weren't cheating, they just broke Unwritten Rules about the Spirit Of the Game. Yuck.

Infidel Castro
Jun 8, 2010

Again and again
Your face reminds me of a bleak future
Despite the absence of hope
I give you this sacrifice




Let me tell you about one of SAS heartthrob Sean Avery and how he got a rule named after him.

It's the first round of the 2007-08 Stanley Cup playoffs. The New York Rangers are taking on the New Jersey Devils and have a 2-0 series lead. Early in the 2nd period the Rangers have a 5-on-3 power play. A common tactic in hockey is for a player to stand in front of the goalie and try to block their line of sight. Avery's job in this instance is to do just that. Sean, however, decides to take his screening game to a whole new level.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ec_2oKWe2Gw

Technically, Avery wasn't cheating at all. Nothing in the rule book said you couldn't wave your stick in someone's face (as long as you don't hit them in the head). However, the NHL ruled immediately after the game to make Avery's tactics a minor penalty for unsportsmanlike conduct. On top of that, Martin Brodeur was so pissed off at Avery that he refused to shake hands with him after the Devils were eliminated in Game 5. When asked about it, Avery responded:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uWj3qcddVGU

Infidel Castro fucked around with this message at 05:21 on Mar 16, 2017

BrigadierSensible
Feb 16, 2012

I've got a pocket full of cheese🧀, and a garden full of trees🌴.

Leperflesh posted:

I read the article and it sounds like it was totally legal play, e.g. they weren't cheating, they just broke Unwritten Rules about the Spirit Of the Game. Yuck.

Cricket is a gentlemans game and they were being ungentlemanly.

Bad show old chap and all that.

Troy Queef
Jan 12, 2013




In rugby union, you're only allowed a set number of substitutions per match--except if a player cannot continue because of a concussion or a blood injury.

Back in '09, Harlequins, one of English union's most traditional and successful clubs, were in the quarterfinal of the Heineken Cup (then the main European club competition) against Irish side Leinster. Quins are down 6-5 late in the 2nd half, in an attacking position, knowing that one successful penalty or drop-goal could swing the match. At the time, they had one of the game's best goal-kickers in Nick Evans: however, he had taken a knock earlier in the half and had to be subbed off, and by the time he had recovered enough to return Quins had burned all their subs. Then Tom Williams, a winger for Harlequins, started coughing up blood after a ruck. Williams had to (obviously) come off, enabling Evans to return to the match. It didn't matter, though, as the score remained the same and Leinster went through.

Here's the video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PxmmkPDuHiY.

Did you notice anything funny there? Like Williams winking at coach Dean Richards (himself a legend in English rugby), or the physio playing around with Williams' inner lip? Well, it's because the team doctor stitched a fake blood capsule into Williams' lower lip, which he could then bite down and release blood if they really needed to get a previously subbed-off player back on the park. When this came to light, it was then revealed that Quins had done the same trick four times before.

As for punishments, Richards got a three-year ban, Williams was suspended for four months, the physio in on the scheme got suspended for two years, the doctor who sewed in the blood capsules was briefly suspended by the British doctors' board, and Quins got fined £300k.

DJExile
Jun 28, 2007


oh my god the wink hahahaha

Schlesische
Jul 4, 2012

So I'm going to mention Bicycle racing. And immediately, everyone's going to think of Lance Armstrong, or those other guys that did whatever it was they did. Or there's those early Tour de Frances where people caught trains around to win the race.

I'm not going to do that. I'm going to link Femke van den Dreissche, a 23-year old who cheated by putting a motor in her bike.

ThinkTank
Oct 23, 2007

The first thing that sprang to mind for me was the Bodyline game in cricket back in 1932. Well it wasn't technically cheating at the time, it is basically seen as the end of the sport as a gentleman's game competing in the spirit of competition to the modern notion of just win. It was such a big deal at the time that it quite literally damaged international relations between England and Australia for over a decade.

At that time the Australian batsman Don Bradman was casually rewriting the record books and helping Australia crush England in the Ashes, and with his career only just starting England was facing the very real prospect that they wouldn't win them again until he retired. So instead of trying to bowl to him in the usual way, they decided to just start bowling at him (and the rest of the Australian batsmen) in a manner that would force him to fend the ball off and knock it into the hands of one of a bunch of fielders waiting close to the stumps. It was seen as incredibly dangerous and unsportsmanlike as bowlers were essentially aiming to hit the opposing batsman in a time of limited padding and no masks.

it was incredibly successful, and England won the Ashes in an Australia but it destroyed any semblance of fair competition at a time when the game was still seen as a gentleman's pursuit. It was such a big deal that it took the Prime Ministers of both countries intervening to prevent a trade boycott over it, and people from both countries were physically attacked as a result.

Eventually the rule was rewritten to limit bodyline deliveries and Bradman went on to be the greatest batsman of all time, but I doubt we'll see another instance of cheating in sports literally leading to international incidents between major western nations again anytime soon.

ThinkTank fucked around with this message at 15:36 on Mar 16, 2017

Dejan Bimble
Mar 24, 2008

we're all black friends
Plaster Town Cop
Everyone's heard of the Jeff Gordon T-rex car, but I'd like to hear of other ingenious Nascar cheats from the modern era, not the same smokey yunick stories told over and over. The same goes for f1.

I suppose it's a bit like Lance Armstrong, they don't want to taint champships by admitting they completely cheated, but drat it, I want to know.

I'd also like to hear how the Patriots cheated in detail, beyond the 'that's not fair' of QB salary depression.
http://jalopnik.com/5812558/the-ten-most-awesome-banned-race-cars/

DJExile
Jun 28, 2007


Schlesische posted:

So I'm going to mention Bicycle racing. And immediately, everyone's going to think of Lance Armstrong, or those other guys that did whatever it was they did. Or there's those early Tour de Frances where people caught trains around to win the race.

I'm not going to do that. I'm going to link Femke van den Dreissche, a 23-year old who cheated by putting a motor in her bike.

It amazes me how tiny electric motors can get crammed into the frames of bikes and be strong enough to actually help those riders :psyduck:

isn't it still an ongoing thing?

Kibner
Oct 21, 2008

#1 Pelican Fan

DJExile posted:

It amazes me how tiny electric motors can get crammed into the frames of bikes and be strong enough to actually help those riders :psyduck:

isn't it still an ongoing thing?

I have a brushless electric motor that is slightly larger than a D size battery. With the right battery, it is capable of propelling a 12 lb. r/c monster truck to over 60 mph while still having enough power to cause it to flip over from the initial torque. As in, I have to mess with the acceleration curve of the motor to stop that from happening.

cosmic gumbo
Mar 26, 2005

IMA
  1. GRIP
  2. N
  3. SIP

glowing-fish posted:

Like this is something that makes me shake my head and go "WTF?"...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horse_murders

A conspiracy of people had wealthy show horses killed so they could collect insurance money, and along the way, they often used gigolos to seduce wealthy widows and then sell them horses to kill. Or something. And at least one of those widows was probably killed.

It would be interesting if anyone had more information on this...I am just looking at wikipedia links.

Fun fact is that the daughter of James Druck went on to have an affair with then-Presidential candidate John Edwards.

DJExile
Jun 28, 2007


Kibner posted:

I have a brushless electric motor that is slightly larger than a D size battery. With the right battery, it is capable of propelling a 12 lb. r/c monster truck to over 60 mph while still having enough power to cause it to flip over from the initial torque. As in, I have to mess with the acceleration curve of the motor to stop that from happening.

Jesus.

I saw where some race authorities are now trying to use thermal imaging to detect if bikes have motors inside them.

glowing-fish
Feb 18, 2013

Keep grinding,
I hope you level up! :)

Uterine Lineup posted:

Fun fact is that the daughter of James Druck went on to have an affair with then-Presidential candidate John Edwards.

Haha that is funny, and if you will excuse me getting off topic, I am trying to think of a more concisely bizarre wikipedia biography introduction than this:

Rielle Hunter (born Lisa Jo Druck on March 20, 1964, also known as Lisa Hunter,[1] Lisa Jo Hunter,[1] and Rielle Jaya James Druck)[2] is an American actress and film producer. She is known for having had an affair and conceiving a child with 2004 Democratic Party vice-presidential nominee John Edwards.[3][4] She is said to be the basis of a character in a Jay McInerney novel[5][6] and she was an early adopter of YouTube as a means of distributing political viral marketing.[7] Her father was implicated in a horse insurance fraud scandal, which involved the intentional killing of her horse when she was a teenager.

Each one of those sentences is bizarrely improbable in their own way.

CannonFodder
Jan 26, 2001

Passion’s Wrench

Aye Doc posted:

the best kinds of cheating are those that fail spectacularly or succeed immensely. I guess in this post, I will be discussing some of the few true divine moments of cheating - the ones that succeed and fail to all-time great levels.


Rosie Ruiz's 2:31:56 time in the 1980 Boston Marathon would have been the third best marathon time for a woman ever, and the best time for a woman in the Boston Marathon ever. it was an improvement of about 25 minutes over her time in the New York Marathon earlier, which is an incredible leap. she would have been an inspirational story, an out-of-shape non-runner who managed to run the best 26 miles in female marathon history. if only she hadn't dipped into the crowd like half a mile in and re-emerge just before the finish line. she was questioned about a bunch of different things - her splits, what she remembered from running through a certain area and her conspicuously forgetting about the thousands of screaming Wesleyan University students, and a bunch of other very obvious basic running details a marathon runner breaking world records would probably know. she was still adamant she ran the marathon as of sometime in the 2000s, I don't know if she still is.
The 1904 Olympics in St Louis MO had one of the strangest finishes.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Athletics_at_the_1904_Summer_Olympics_–_Men's_marathon

The favorite collapsed at mile 9, rode in a car back towards the stadium, then jogged in when enough time had passed. He was later disqualified when it was found out.

The eventual winner was carried across the line by his coaches, hallucinating due to dehydration, brandy mixed with rat poison, and his lungs hurting from having to run behind the coaches car while it kicked up dust from the dirt road. He got the gold because, well, he didn't ride in the car.

Boomer The Cannon
Oct 27, 2011

Gotta see it live!


Who wanted racecars?

Michael Waltrip - Cheaters Hall of Shame in 2007:

http://www.espn.com/racing/columns/story?id=3213962&columnist=newton_david&seriesId=2
http://www.foxnews.com/story/2007/02/16/driver-waltrip-apologizes-for-team-part-in-nascar-daytona-500-fuel-scandal.html

[quoteThe two-time Daytona 500 winner, who lost two key crew members Wednesday when NASCAR penalized his team for using a fuel additive, said he had to be talked into racing by his wife and Toyota officials who are seething that Waltrip tainted their Nextel Cup debut.

"I didn't want to damage the integrity of the sport further by going out there and having people think, 'What's he doing out there?"' Waltrip said. "I came real close to not running today."][/quote]

Cheaters Hall of Fame in 2011:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oLmX5THloH8&t=98s Watch the 15 truck. This was under 'Mechanical Failure'

Thrown out of the Hall of Fame in 2013 and ultimately out of the sport due to an itchy arm:

http://www.si.com/racing/2013/10/16/nascar-michael-waltrip-racing-cheating-fallout

quote:

First, at Richmond, Bowyer spun himself out to try to help Truex make the Chase. Then Vickers, who was piloting the No. 55 Toyota, was ordered onto pit road late by the team's general manager, Ty Norris, in another blatant attempt to try to manipulate the race so that Truex would advance to the playoffs.

Here's Dale Earnhardt casually screwing with tech inspection



Here's the Joe Gibbs team reducing drag off the front of the car at Watkins Glen, on a sunny day without a cloud in the sky:


glowing-fish
Feb 18, 2013

Keep grinding,
I hope you level up! :)

Boomer The Cannon posted:



Here's the Joe Gibbs team reducing drag off the front of the car at Watkins Glen, on a sunny day without a cloud in the sky:



By running the windshield wipers? I would think that if that did anything, it would add a little bit more drag?

DJExile
Jun 28, 2007


glowing-fish posted:

By running the windshield wipers? I would think that if that did anything, it would add a little bit more drag?

I think he kept it locked straight up like that

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DONT TOUCH THE PC
Jul 15, 2001

You should try it, it's a real buzz.

Schlesische posted:

So I'm going to mention Bicycle racing. And immediately, everyone's going to think of Lance Armstrong, or those other guys that did whatever it was they did. Or there's those early Tour de Frances where people caught trains around to win the race.

I'm not going to do that. I'm going to link Femke van den Dreissche, a 23-year old who cheated by putting a motor in her bike.

Michel Pollentier and his Pear contraption (which was actually a condom) to evade piss tests is another great chapter in Belgian cycling, the best thing about that story is that apparently his own Team Manager gave him away so he could collect some money from Renault (the sponsor of the eventual winner: Benard Hinault). Cycling and Pro-Wrestling both have the best stories about people screwing each-other over.

DONT TOUCH THE PC fucked around with this message at 11:27 on Mar 17, 2017

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