Criminalising cheating in sport.

[NAE NOOKIE]

The latest thing to pop up is professional cyclists with motors fitted to their bikes FFS.

I am not sure if any sports people caught cheating can be, or have been, jailed in the UK or elsewhere in the world, but if not perhaps its time we started doing just that. I know that officials were jailed and fined after the 2006 Italian football scandal, but what I'm talking about here is the actual competitors caught cheating being jailed and/or fined. Apart from the morals of the situation there is also just as strong a criminal case for it:

Winning a gold medal at the Olympics can mean lucrative sponsorship and advertising contracts for the athlete concerned running into millions of pounds, just look at Mo Farah, Jessica Ennis and our own Chris Hoy ....... If an athlete cheats to win they are not only stealing first place in a race, they are stealing earnings from those who should have won.

As I recall, by tradition, the winner of the Tour De France splits his prize money amongst his team mates because a) they have helped him to win, and b) the money he will make from advertising and sponsorship as winner of the race is massive in comparison to the prize money. Being beaten by a cheat ( Lance Armstrong ) must have cost a few honest cyclists millions of pounds over the years.

Then of course there is the poor punter who bets on sporting events ..... how many millions of pounds have they been cheated out of over the years by the athlete or team they have backed being beaten by cheats. The other side of that coin of course is the times bookies must have lost huge amounts when a doped up favourite romps home.

IMO ...... If an athlete is caught cheating once it should be left to his sporting body to punish him, if he is caught cheating twice, or an investigation finds that he has cheated systematically over a number of years and the evidence is irrefutable he should be jailed for up to 5 years.

I'm not talking about guys who accidentally take the wrong antihistamine a week before a race, but folk like Armstrong and Justin Gatlin who have clearly and deliberately cheated over a number of years.

[Hibrandenburg]

Wouldn't making money under false pretences be tantamount to fraud? :dunno:

[lord bunberry]

There's was a few Pakistani cricketers jailed for cheating.

[Jack]

I like the idea and maybe it will happen one day.

Just think about the legislative process though. It would take forever and then be fought over in the courts looking to set precedents would take beyond forever ;-)

And all this would need to be done by every country in the world taking part in competitive sport.

As Hibrandenburg suggests current laws may be able to be used. The fact they haven't so far suggests it's probably not possible. Looking at Armstrong living in the USA and the way the USA has gone after FIFA suggests to me that individual sportspeople are immune while administrators are not.

[Scouse Hibee]

Players arrested on the pitch for assault as soon as they stick the nut on someone :greengrin

[snooky]

This should go all the way and include dominos.
I've played with a few cheating pack-shufflers in my days.
:rules:

[Future17]

I think the difficulty is very few people (relatively speaking) have ever been proven to have cheated. Outside of failing a drugs test directly after a competition, it would often be hard to prove cheating has directly led to a material benefit.

If we were to bring something like this in, the mechanism for identifying cheats would have to be bullet-proof and that would be an expensive business.

[Killiehibbie]

Stop watching and if enough people do the same money dries up and the cheats are out of a job.

[HUTCHYHIBBY]

I've played with a few cheating pack-shufflers in my days.
:rules:

Is that a euphemism?

[snooky]

Is that a euphemism?

Naw, I definitely wisny 'chappin' :wink: