2000 Olympics in Sydney, women's artistic gymnastics team final. Vault was set at the wrong level and resulted in many athletes, including some favoured to win or medal, having terrible vaults. [https://www.gymnastics-history.com/2022/05/2000-the-sydney-vault-debacle-and-the-apparatus-norms-hypothesis/](https://www.gymnastics-history.com/2022/05/2000-the-sydney-vault-debacle-and-the-apparatus-norms-hypothesis/)
Was fixed during the third rotation (so more than halfway through) but some of the favourited gymnasts had already made mistakes on another apparatus, presumably because they were so rattled from their bad vaults (and at least one gymnast was lucky she wasn't seriously injured due to the vault being too low).
She is always the first person that comes to my mind when this subject is brought up. My senior year of high school I had to give a persuasive speech and this event was my talking point.
2000 WAG olympics gets referred to as the "asterisks olympics" not only bc of the vault scandal. Andreea Raducan was the original gold medal winner, until she tested positive for pseudoephedrine. Her medal was taken away and given to teammate Simona Amanar. Not only that, the entire Chinese team was retroactively disqualified for falsifying birth records so that 14 year olds could compete.
If you want to get really dark then you might want to do something about the women’s Olympic Ice Skating scandal of 2022. Only one happy was the bronze medalist from Japan (who would go on to win 2 world championship golds.) Maybe it was because I was watching it live, but just seeing the pure chaos and the Russian team imploding onto itself was nuts.
I felt terrible for the girls who were all young and obviously manipulated but I was sorta glad to see the downfall of Eteri. She’s now persona non grata in the skating world after years of being praised.
The controversy of the 1972 men’s basketball finals and the US team still not accepting their Silver medals, which are still in the IOC’s possession I believe,
Correct decision, along with shunning the medal ceremony. There would have been outrage in the United States if that outcome had been acknowledged. The referees were determined to allow the Russians to inbound the ball until they got it right.
It wasn't the refs. The director of the international basketball federation marched down after the first final whistle to demand that they put time back on the clock. He may have done it twice. Jerkface.
1988 Olympic boxing when Roy Jones Jr. obliterated his Korean opponent all 3 rounds, while oblivious that the judging had been predetermined in the Korean's favor.
To this day I don't know how the South Koreans were stupid enough to fix a fight involving Roy Jones Jr., who was already touted as a future all time great. They could have gotten away with it given a lesser fighter. Instead there was international outrage and that fight changed international boxing scoring for the next 20+ years. And since that scoring system was so convoluted and difficult to follow, Olympic boxing steadily declined in popularity.
Another one would be Moscow 1980 and the 20 minute delay in scoring the final event of the women's gymnastics all around, enabling the Russians enough time to figure out how to screw Nadia Comaneci out of the gold medal in favor of a Russian. Romania was so livid at that situation they ignored the Soviet led boycott of Los Angeles 1984.
There was cheating throughout Moscow 1980, including huge grandstand doors strategically opened and closed during field events, designed to provide or deny a wind advantage, depending on whether or not a Russian was throwing.
I forgot about the 1980 doors! Opening a stage door may be too niche for a general audience to get the reference but I can use it to inspire one team using the same way to “sabotage“ the other 2 teams during the competitions.
The crazy defrocked priest who tackled the leader of the Marathon in the 2004 Athens Games. Fucked him up and set him back so instead of taking gold, which he probably would have, he ended up with bronze.
The dude late showed up at an F1 race trying to tackle a race car. Numerous drivers swerved at the last second to avoid him and the marshals got him off of the track before he got himself killed.
A bit more light hearted - during the Sydney 2000 Olympics, comedy duo Roy and HG introduced an alternate Olympic mascot - [Fatso the Fat Arsed Wombat](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fatso_the_Fat-Arsed_Wombat), in opposition to the official mascots, Olly, Milly and Dickhead (Syd, Ollie and Millie).
Channel 7, the Australian host broadcaster, had Roy and HG doing a nightly half hour show, which meant that Fatso was being seen on official channels, and with athletes.
Fatso became "the people's champion", and started being seen at events (even though only two Fatso's were made).
The AOC (Australian Olympic Committee) cracked the shits when Australia's swimmers started taking Fatso onto the medal dais, and attempted to ban athletes from appearing with Fatso.
News of this ban quickly leaked out, and painted the AOC as a bunch of gronks who hate fun. The ban was quickly and quietly put away, with IOC VP (and AOC Chairman) John Coates distancing himself from the ban.
Being Australian, we cop a lot from New Zealand about all sorts of things, claiming Australia is always the bad guys. One in particular is the underarm delivery.
So it is always good to fire back that New Zealand caused a mass boycott of the 1976 Summer Olympics.
The United Nations had requested countries isolate South Africa in sport, due to their apartheid policies.
Just prior to the Olympics, the New Zealand Rugby Union thumbed their nose at this request, and toured South Africa (the tour was still ongoing during the Olympics).
29 nations, mostly African, requested that New Zealand be kicked out of the Olympics. When the IOC refused (claiming that rugby was not an Olympic sport, and was therefore outside their jurisdiction), those nations pulled up stumps and went home.
Outside of the western boycott of the Moscow Olympics, this is the biggest Olympic boycott in history.
Mind you, this would not be the last time New Zealand Rugby caused international issues over South Africa - New Zealand hosted the Springboks in 1981, in defiance of the Gleneagles Agreement (a 1977 agreement that Commonwealth of Nations countries would cut all sporting ties with South Africa).
I laughed so hard reading that quote at the time that I actually got a stomach cramp. Like the audacity to claim that chemistry, a science known for needing exact measurements, isn’t exact??? What?
Ben Johnson in 88. Not just at the time but since. Almost every finalist should have had his treatment at the time as it turned out.
Khalid Skah as well. Used his countrymen who was a lapped runner to disrupt the Kenyan runners in the mens 10km at the 1992 Olympics.
A team being banned from competing and using Team Formally Known as X instead.
Show jumping during the pentathlon. (Although this has been replaced.)
Lots of [wardrobe malfunctions.](https://www.cosmopolitan.com/entertainment/tv/a37066298/olympic-wardrobe-malfunctions/) I'd add questionable figure skating costumes to that.
[Filming a cockroach in the middle of a match.](https://x.com/s6ntispam/status/1419741438942883842?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1419741438942883842%7Ctwgr%5E281535ca679148c005eabcaa72c86fc5f76967c4%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.newsweek.com%2F23-shocking-olympics-moments-probably-missed-tokyo-2020-1616924)
Not really a scandal, but the short track skating guy from Australia who won Gold because everyone else fell down in both his semi final and the final is pretty funny.
The Chinese Gymnast Age controversy is also pretty good. There’s a minimum age to compete, but if you don’t really care about child protection, someone under the age limit, who went through a gruelling training regime can be better at certain gymnastics events as they are often lighter and more flexible. So you have China possibly doctoring athlete‘s papers to get them to the Games under the Age limit and then US journalists starting wild investigations trying to prove age fraud by zooming in on the teeth and stuff like that. Both sides of the controversy - as per usual in gymnastics - being utterly weird about it.
I've always thought it would be hilarious and rage-inducing to show any other sport, like basketball, the way they do women's gymnastics. Just long, lingering shots of players on the sidelines, showing them taping up injuries, laughing and chatting together. Only show about 20% of the actual game. Make sure to describe very basic things about the game. "You know that hoop is only 18 inches wide". Remind viewers of who the players are over and over and make sure to repeat the same One Fun Fact about them every game. Also spend crazy amounts of time showing the families in the stands.
If I had the wherewithal to edit video and write a script I would do it. I don't, so feel free. Make me proud
Montreal 1976 and Boris Onischenko's cheating in the fencing part of Modern Pentathlon, plus how it led Great Britain to the team gold:
https://www.si.com/olympics/2020/07/21/greatest-olympic-cheater-boris-onischenko-1976-olympics
2000 Olympics in Sydney, women's artistic gymnastics team final. Vault was set at the wrong level and resulted in many athletes, including some favoured to win or medal, having terrible vaults. [https://www.gymnastics-history.com/2022/05/2000-the-sydney-vault-debacle-and-the-apparatus-norms-hypothesis/](https://www.gymnastics-history.com/2022/05/2000-the-sydney-vault-debacle-and-the-apparatus-norms-hypothesis/) Was fixed during the third rotation (so more than halfway through) but some of the favourited gymnasts had already made mistakes on another apparatus, presumably because they were so rattled from their bad vaults (and at least one gymnast was lucky she wasn't seriously injured due to the vault being too low).
I know Svetlana Khorkina is controversial, but I will never stop feeling terrible for how this worked out for her.
I agree. She (and all of the other gymnasts impacted) deserved a chance to do their best.
She is always the first person that comes to my mind when this subject is brought up. My senior year of high school I had to give a persuasive speech and this event was my talking point.
2000 WAG olympics gets referred to as the "asterisks olympics" not only bc of the vault scandal. Andreea Raducan was the original gold medal winner, until she tested positive for pseudoephedrine. Her medal was taken away and given to teammate Simona Amanar. Not only that, the entire Chinese team was retroactively disqualified for falsifying birth records so that 14 year olds could compete.
Apparently they got better at that in future Games
I was thinking, “How did I not know about this?!” And then had the sobering realization that was forever ago and I was 12 at the time. GEEZ.
If you want to get really dark then you might want to do something about the women’s Olympic Ice Skating scandal of 2022. Only one happy was the bronze medalist from Japan (who would go on to win 2 world championship golds.) Maybe it was because I was watching it live, but just seeing the pure chaos and the Russian team imploding onto itself was nuts.
Watching live made me feel so sick. At the center of it all was a child; it felt wrong to be watching but couldn’t look away.
I felt terrible for the girls who were all young and obviously manipulated but I was sorta glad to see the downfall of Eteri. She’s now persona non grata in the skating world after years of being praised.
The controversy of the 1972 men’s basketball finals and the US team still not accepting their Silver medals, which are still in the IOC’s possession I believe,
Correct decision, along with shunning the medal ceremony. There would have been outrage in the United States if that outcome had been acknowledged. The referees were determined to allow the Russians to inbound the ball until they got it right.
It wasn't the refs. The director of the international basketball federation marched down after the first final whistle to demand that they put time back on the clock. He may have done it twice. Jerkface.
1988 Olympic boxing when Roy Jones Jr. obliterated his Korean opponent all 3 rounds, while oblivious that the judging had been predetermined in the Korean's favor. To this day I don't know how the South Koreans were stupid enough to fix a fight involving Roy Jones Jr., who was already touted as a future all time great. They could have gotten away with it given a lesser fighter. Instead there was international outrage and that fight changed international boxing scoring for the next 20+ years. And since that scoring system was so convoluted and difficult to follow, Olympic boxing steadily declined in popularity. Another one would be Moscow 1980 and the 20 minute delay in scoring the final event of the women's gymnastics all around, enabling the Russians enough time to figure out how to screw Nadia Comaneci out of the gold medal in favor of a Russian. Romania was so livid at that situation they ignored the Soviet led boycott of Los Angeles 1984. There was cheating throughout Moscow 1980, including huge grandstand doors strategically opened and closed during field events, designed to provide or deny a wind advantage, depending on whether or not a Russian was throwing.
I forgot about the 1980 doors! Opening a stage door may be too niche for a general audience to get the reference but I can use it to inspire one team using the same way to “sabotage“ the other 2 teams during the competitions.
The entirety of the 1904 Marathon
You don’t think Tonya Harding was dark?!
True. But I’m thinking of it along the lines of the movie I, Tonya
The crazy defrocked priest who tackled the leader of the Marathon in the 2004 Athens Games. Fucked him up and set him back so instead of taking gold, which he probably would have, he ended up with bronze.
The dude late showed up at an F1 race trying to tackle a race car. Numerous drivers swerved at the last second to avoid him and the marshals got him off of the track before he got himself killed.
A bit more light hearted - during the Sydney 2000 Olympics, comedy duo Roy and HG introduced an alternate Olympic mascot - [Fatso the Fat Arsed Wombat](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fatso_the_Fat-Arsed_Wombat), in opposition to the official mascots, Olly, Milly and Dickhead (Syd, Ollie and Millie). Channel 7, the Australian host broadcaster, had Roy and HG doing a nightly half hour show, which meant that Fatso was being seen on official channels, and with athletes. Fatso became "the people's champion", and started being seen at events (even though only two Fatso's were made). The AOC (Australian Olympic Committee) cracked the shits when Australia's swimmers started taking Fatso onto the medal dais, and attempted to ban athletes from appearing with Fatso. News of this ban quickly leaked out, and painted the AOC as a bunch of gronks who hate fun. The ban was quickly and quietly put away, with IOC VP (and AOC Chairman) John Coates distancing himself from the ban.
Now I want a Fatso toy. Not for the comedy show, because TIL he exists
Being Australian, we cop a lot from New Zealand about all sorts of things, claiming Australia is always the bad guys. One in particular is the underarm delivery. So it is always good to fire back that New Zealand caused a mass boycott of the 1976 Summer Olympics. The United Nations had requested countries isolate South Africa in sport, due to their apartheid policies. Just prior to the Olympics, the New Zealand Rugby Union thumbed their nose at this request, and toured South Africa (the tour was still ongoing during the Olympics). 29 nations, mostly African, requested that New Zealand be kicked out of the Olympics. When the IOC refused (claiming that rugby was not an Olympic sport, and was therefore outside their jurisdiction), those nations pulled up stumps and went home. Outside of the western boycott of the Moscow Olympics, this is the biggest Olympic boycott in history. Mind you, this would not be the last time New Zealand Rugby caused international issues over South Africa - New Zealand hosted the Springboks in 1981, in defiance of the Gleneagles Agreement (a 1977 agreement that Commonwealth of Nations countries would cut all sporting ties with South Africa).
The '76 boycotts are an unheralded but important part of Olympic history.
Rio 2016 ran out of chemicals for the pool and it turned green. And the all time quote from any Olympics ever: "chemistry is not an exact science."
I laughed so hard reading that quote at the time that I actually got a stomach cramp. Like the audacity to claim that chemistry, a science known for needing exact measurements, isn’t exact??? What?
Race walkers running. Shark suits for swimmers.
>Race walkers running. So just all race walkers then?
The 2002 pairs figure skating scandal Russia finding a way to cheat always
Milorad Cavic lost his gold to Phelps at 2008 Beijing Olympics because the pressure plate didn't register his 1st touch at a swimming race.
Ben Johnson in 88. Not just at the time but since. Almost every finalist should have had his treatment at the time as it turned out. Khalid Skah as well. Used his countrymen who was a lapped runner to disrupt the Kenyan runners in the mens 10km at the 1992 Olympics.
A team being banned from competing and using Team Formally Known as X instead. Show jumping during the pentathlon. (Although this has been replaced.) Lots of [wardrobe malfunctions.](https://www.cosmopolitan.com/entertainment/tv/a37066298/olympic-wardrobe-malfunctions/) I'd add questionable figure skating costumes to that. [Filming a cockroach in the middle of a match.](https://x.com/s6ntispam/status/1419741438942883842?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1419741438942883842%7Ctwgr%5E281535ca679148c005eabcaa72c86fc5f76967c4%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.newsweek.com%2F23-shocking-olympics-moments-probably-missed-tokyo-2020-1616924)
Not really a scandal, but the short track skating guy from Australia who won Gold because everyone else fell down in both his semi final and the final is pretty funny. The Chinese Gymnast Age controversy is also pretty good. There’s a minimum age to compete, but if you don’t really care about child protection, someone under the age limit, who went through a gruelling training regime can be better at certain gymnastics events as they are often lighter and more flexible. So you have China possibly doctoring athlete‘s papers to get them to the Games under the Age limit and then US journalists starting wild investigations trying to prove age fraud by zooming in on the teeth and stuff like that. Both sides of the controversy - as per usual in gymnastics - being utterly weird about it.
How about a barefoot runner that has toenails like claws and they use them slash the legs of the other runners?
Americans: any ideas on what to mock about NBC’s Olympic coverage/sportscasting?
I've always thought it would be hilarious and rage-inducing to show any other sport, like basketball, the way they do women's gymnastics. Just long, lingering shots of players on the sidelines, showing them taping up injuries, laughing and chatting together. Only show about 20% of the actual game. Make sure to describe very basic things about the game. "You know that hoop is only 18 inches wide". Remind viewers of who the players are over and over and make sure to repeat the same One Fun Fact about them every game. Also spend crazy amounts of time showing the families in the stands. If I had the wherewithal to edit video and write a script I would do it. I don't, so feel free. Make me proud
Costas' pink eye in Sochi? I mean it was sucky for him but he healed and it wasn't catatastrophic just annoying.
Montreal 1976 and Boris Onischenko's cheating in the fencing part of Modern Pentathlon, plus how it led Great Britain to the team gold: https://www.si.com/olympics/2020/07/21/greatest-olympic-cheater-boris-onischenko-1976-olympics
Not a scandal but you really need to throw in a ton of references about twizzles.
Kristi Yamaguchi
What was scandalous about her?
Ohh the whole thing where she got attacked by a competitor was like one of the craziest things in sports of the 20th century.
Do you mean the attack on Nancy Kerrigan by Tonya Harding’s ex husband?
Yes. That whole thing was wild.