dirty
EOG Master
Jeff Gordon / Special to FOXSports.com
Posted: 1 hour ago Barry Bonds broke Henry Aaron's home-run record Tuesday, sparking a mixed reaction from baseball fans, his peers in the major leagues, and the men governing our national pastime.Although Bonds has never tested positive for performance enhancing drugs, allegations of steroid use emerged during the BALCO investigation. San Francisco Chronicle reporters used leaked grand jury testimony and painted a disturbing picture of his training methods.
This controversy will forever taint Bonds' epic power surge. His record won't come with an asterisk, but it will join the list of dubious achievements earned by athletes under suspicious circumstances.
Here are 11 of the most glaring examples:
Lance Armstrong's Tour de France winning streak
Many European cycling fans view Armstrong the way many baseball fans view Bonds ? with skepticism. Armstrong never tested positive for performance enhancing drugs while winning the Tour seven times in a row, but published reports in Europe have detailed alleged infractions.
The French newspaper L'Equipe claimed it could prove six of Armstrong's urine samples from the 1999 Tour tested positive last year for the blood booster erythropoietin (EPO). Armstrong's official response to that story: "I will simply restate what I have said many times: I have never taken performance enhancing drugs."
He has been the subject of much newspaper, magazine and book reporting on the topic. Each time he denied the charges. The subsequent Floyd Landis controversy marred the sport, though, as did widespread doping admissions by former cyclists.
<fstl:embedded contentid="7042832" ordinal="6" type="Image"></fstl:embedded>
Michael Strahan's NFL sack record
The New York Giants defensive end was running out of time to break Mark Gastineau's 17-year-old record of 22 sacks in a season. Strahan was stuck on 21-1/2.
With just 2:42 left in the fourth quarter of Strahan's final game of the 2001 regular season, the Green Bay Packers led the Giants 34-25. Packers quarterback Brett Favre called a running play, then tried a "naked bootleg" play by rolling out to Strahan's side without a blocker.
When confronted by Strahan, Favre flopped and gave up the record sack uncontested. Since Favre had joked about Strahan's record quest before the game ? suggesting a side deal between the two could be arranged ? the achievement appeared dubious.
"I just react to what happens," Strahan said after the game. "He was booting out on the same play earlier and I missed him, as far as containing and keeping him in the pocket. This time he went down and I hopped on him. What am I supposed to do? Get up and say, 'Brett! Why didn't you throw it?'"
Further diminishing Strahan's "record" is Deacon Jones' unofficial mark of 26 sacks ? earned before the NFL kept such statistics.
Marite Koch, 400-meter world record
One of the most durable track and field records of all time is also one of the most questionable. On Oct. 6, 1985, Koch ran a 400-meter race in 47.60 seconds.
In subsequent years, nobody came especially close to touching that record. Evidence subsequently gleaned from East German secret police files indicated that Koch was involved in that country's doping program.
The Daily Mail of London asked current 400-meter star Sanya Richards if she believes Koch cheated. "That's a tough question but I have to say no," Richards said. "I have to believe that the mark is there and it's the mark I have to pass. If she was never busted, she was clean. That's how the sport is."
Si-Hun Park, 1988 light-middleweight Olympic champ
Roy Jones Jr. should have won the gold medal at the 1988 Seoul Olympics. In the title bout, he battered Park relentlessly, out-punching the South Korean boxer 86-32 in his homeland.
And yet Park was awarded the victory by a 3-2 decision. This became the gold standard for Olympic judging travesties, and it triggered scoring reforms for future Olympics.
Park apologized to Jones. One judge admitted the decision was wrong. The three judges who voted against Jones were suspended. Sheepish officials awarded Jones the Val Barker trophy as the top boxer in the Olympics.
But even though the IOC later determined that the three judges had been wined and dined by Korean officials, the decision stood.
Marion Jones, three gold medals, 2000 Olympics
Like Bonds, Jones was implicated in the BALCO steroid case. Unlike Bonds, she has not been able to shrug off the controversy.
After winning five medals at the 2000 Summer Olympics ? including three gold medals ? Jones has been running under a cloud of suspicion.
In a 2004 TV interview, BALCO founder Victor Conte claimed he personally designed her doping regimen and watched her inject herself with steroids before the Sydney Olympics. Jones responded with a $25 million defamation suit that was settled out of court. Conte, though, never backed off his claim.
"I have always told the truth regarding my relationship with Marion Jones," he insisted after settling the suit.
Jones subsequently ran into severe financial difficulties and more doping allegations after testing positive for EPO at the U.S. Track and Field Championships last year. But her "B" sample came up clean, prompting her to issue this statement:
"I am absolutely ecstatic. I have always maintained that I have never, ever taken performance enhancing drugs, and I am pleased that a scientific process has now demonstrated that fact."
Richard Petty's 200 victories
NASCAR race teams are known to push the envelope in the garage, seeking any advantage to make their cars faster. Typically, mechanics straddle the line between what is and isn't allowed. Often they cross that line.
And sometimes they get caught, as "The King" did after winning his 198th race at the Miller High Life 500 in 1983. He was fined $35,000 and docked 104 championship points for using an oversized engine.
But the victory stood, and he won his 199th and 200th races ? his final two victories ? the following year. Racing historians don't regard this as a big deal, since failed inspections don't generate outrage in NASCAR country.
"There's cheating, and there's creating," team co-owner Eddie Wood once explained. "If you're caught, people inside know you were just creating. It's the people outside who call it cheating. Everybody who's ever had a race car has been there and done that. If they say they haven't, they're lying."
<fstl:embedded contentid="7042832" ordinal="5" type="Image"></fstl:embedded>
Nykesha Sales, UConn career scoring record
In 1998, University of Connecticut women's basketball star Nykesha Sales suffered an Achilles tendon injury that ended her senior season. She was one basket short of a new school scoring record of 2,178 points.
So UConn coach Geno Auriemma conspired with Villanova coach Harry Peretta to allow Sales to score that basket. At the start of the game, Sales went onto the court wearing a cast and scored an uncontested layup to start the game.
Then UConn returned the favor, allowing Villanova to score an uncontested layup of its own to tie the game 2-2. That business out of the way, the teams then started playing for real and Sales had her record.
"She never asked for it, never wanted it, and years from now I'm going to pin her down and go, 'tell me the truth, did you really want to tell me to go jump in the lake and didn't want to?'" Auriemma later said. "I don't know, I'm afraid to ask her that question."
USSR basketball gold medal, 1972 Olympics
The U.S. had never lost a basketball game in the Olympics until facing the Soviets in the 1972 finals at Munich. The U. S. record was 62-0 heading into the gold medal game.
The Americans believed they had beaten the Soviets 50-49 in a hard-fought game. They rallied fiercely and scored the would-be winning points with three seconds left on two Doug Collins free throws. The Russians had one last chance to win, but they were unable to get off a shot as time expired.
<fstl:embedded contentid="7042832" ordinal="4" type="Image"></fstl:embedded>
As the U.S. team celebrated its victory, game officials conferred and decided to give the Soviets a second chance to win the game. R. William Jones, the secretary-general of the International Amateur Basketball Federation, ordered three seconds be put back on the clock.
Russian player Ivan Edeshko was then able to threw a long pass to Alexander Belov, who scored the winning basket and made hoops history. The U.S. appealed the decision to the five-man Jury of Appeal, but three of the judges were from Soviet-bloc countries. Case closed.
The U.S. players never accepted their silver medals. "If we had gotten beat, I would be proud to display my silver medal today," team member Mike Bantom later said. "But, we didn't get beat, we got cheated."
Gordie Howe's sixth decade of hockey
The man known as "Mr. Hockey" did many unique things in a professional career that started in 1946 and ended in 1980 ? with a brief retirement during early 1970s his only hiatus. He set many NHL records that Wayne Gretzky would break and helped launch the World Hockey Association.
When the WHA merged with the NHL, Howe played one last season at the age of 51. As a promotional gimmick, the Detroit Vipers of the International Hockey League signed him to a one-game contract in 1997. He played one shift at the age of 69, without touching the puck, and pushed his career into a sixth decade.
This was similar to the stunt baseball legend Minnie Minoso participated to "extend" his career.
Yelena Berezhnaya and Anton Sikharulidze, 2002 gold medal
Olympic figure skating judging has been nearly as outrageous as boxing judging over the years. A classic case saw Berezhnaya and Sikharulidze win the gold in Salt Lake City over Canadians Jamie Sale and David Pelletier.
The judging didn't seem as egregiously wrong as in the case of Roy Jones Jr. ... until French judge Marie-Reine Le Gougne admitted she favored the Russians after being pressured into a score-swapping scheme. Officials sent her home from the Winter Games, banished her from judging and awarded the Canadians duplicate gold medals in an unprecedented move. As in the Roy Jones Jr. case, controversy forced reforms how these Olympic events are judged.
"Justice was done," Pelletier said at the time. "It doesn't take away anything from Elena and Anton. This was not something against them. It was something against the system."
Argentina's 1986 World Cup victory
Diego Maradona was magnificent while leading his homeland to this championship. He set up the game-winning goal in the final against West Germany. He scored twice in a semifinal victory over Belgium.
He scored one of the greatest goals ever during a quarterfinal victory over England, dribbling through frozen foes as if they were pylons.
But he also scored the "Hand of God" goal against the Brits, using the back of his fist to punch the ball past goalkeeper Peter Shilton. This proved to be the decisive goal in a 2-1 victory.
Tunisian referee Ali Bennaceur missed the violation. Nearly 20 years later, Maradona finally admitted that the "Hand of God" goal was just an ordinary hand ball that the ref missed.
"Never did I regret having scored in that way," he said.
FOX Sports on MSN - More Sports - Top 11 tainted sports achievements
Posted: 1 hour ago Barry Bonds broke Henry Aaron's home-run record Tuesday, sparking a mixed reaction from baseball fans, his peers in the major leagues, and the men governing our national pastime.Although Bonds has never tested positive for performance enhancing drugs, allegations of steroid use emerged during the BALCO investigation. San Francisco Chronicle reporters used leaked grand jury testimony and painted a disturbing picture of his training methods.
This controversy will forever taint Bonds' epic power surge. His record won't come with an asterisk, but it will join the list of dubious achievements earned by athletes under suspicious circumstances.
Here are 11 of the most glaring examples:
Lance Armstrong's Tour de France winning streak
Many European cycling fans view Armstrong the way many baseball fans view Bonds ? with skepticism. Armstrong never tested positive for performance enhancing drugs while winning the Tour seven times in a row, but published reports in Europe have detailed alleged infractions.
The French newspaper L'Equipe claimed it could prove six of Armstrong's urine samples from the 1999 Tour tested positive last year for the blood booster erythropoietin (EPO). Armstrong's official response to that story: "I will simply restate what I have said many times: I have never taken performance enhancing drugs."
He has been the subject of much newspaper, magazine and book reporting on the topic. Each time he denied the charges. The subsequent Floyd Landis controversy marred the sport, though, as did widespread doping admissions by former cyclists.
<fstl:embedded contentid="7042832" ordinal="6" type="Image"></fstl:embedded>
Michael Strahan's NFL sack record
The New York Giants defensive end was running out of time to break Mark Gastineau's 17-year-old record of 22 sacks in a season. Strahan was stuck on 21-1/2.
With just 2:42 left in the fourth quarter of Strahan's final game of the 2001 regular season, the Green Bay Packers led the Giants 34-25. Packers quarterback Brett Favre called a running play, then tried a "naked bootleg" play by rolling out to Strahan's side without a blocker.
When confronted by Strahan, Favre flopped and gave up the record sack uncontested. Since Favre had joked about Strahan's record quest before the game ? suggesting a side deal between the two could be arranged ? the achievement appeared dubious.
"I just react to what happens," Strahan said after the game. "He was booting out on the same play earlier and I missed him, as far as containing and keeping him in the pocket. This time he went down and I hopped on him. What am I supposed to do? Get up and say, 'Brett! Why didn't you throw it?'"
Further diminishing Strahan's "record" is Deacon Jones' unofficial mark of 26 sacks ? earned before the NFL kept such statistics.
Marite Koch, 400-meter world record
One of the most durable track and field records of all time is also one of the most questionable. On Oct. 6, 1985, Koch ran a 400-meter race in 47.60 seconds.
In subsequent years, nobody came especially close to touching that record. Evidence subsequently gleaned from East German secret police files indicated that Koch was involved in that country's doping program.
The Daily Mail of London asked current 400-meter star Sanya Richards if she believes Koch cheated. "That's a tough question but I have to say no," Richards said. "I have to believe that the mark is there and it's the mark I have to pass. If she was never busted, she was clean. That's how the sport is."
Si-Hun Park, 1988 light-middleweight Olympic champ
Roy Jones Jr. should have won the gold medal at the 1988 Seoul Olympics. In the title bout, he battered Park relentlessly, out-punching the South Korean boxer 86-32 in his homeland.
And yet Park was awarded the victory by a 3-2 decision. This became the gold standard for Olympic judging travesties, and it triggered scoring reforms for future Olympics.
Park apologized to Jones. One judge admitted the decision was wrong. The three judges who voted against Jones were suspended. Sheepish officials awarded Jones the Val Barker trophy as the top boxer in the Olympics.
But even though the IOC later determined that the three judges had been wined and dined by Korean officials, the decision stood.
Marion Jones, three gold medals, 2000 Olympics
Like Bonds, Jones was implicated in the BALCO steroid case. Unlike Bonds, she has not been able to shrug off the controversy.
After winning five medals at the 2000 Summer Olympics ? including three gold medals ? Jones has been running under a cloud of suspicion.
In a 2004 TV interview, BALCO founder Victor Conte claimed he personally designed her doping regimen and watched her inject herself with steroids before the Sydney Olympics. Jones responded with a $25 million defamation suit that was settled out of court. Conte, though, never backed off his claim.
"I have always told the truth regarding my relationship with Marion Jones," he insisted after settling the suit.
Jones subsequently ran into severe financial difficulties and more doping allegations after testing positive for EPO at the U.S. Track and Field Championships last year. But her "B" sample came up clean, prompting her to issue this statement:
"I am absolutely ecstatic. I have always maintained that I have never, ever taken performance enhancing drugs, and I am pleased that a scientific process has now demonstrated that fact."
Richard Petty's 200 victories
NASCAR race teams are known to push the envelope in the garage, seeking any advantage to make their cars faster. Typically, mechanics straddle the line between what is and isn't allowed. Often they cross that line.
And sometimes they get caught, as "The King" did after winning his 198th race at the Miller High Life 500 in 1983. He was fined $35,000 and docked 104 championship points for using an oversized engine.
But the victory stood, and he won his 199th and 200th races ? his final two victories ? the following year. Racing historians don't regard this as a big deal, since failed inspections don't generate outrage in NASCAR country.
"There's cheating, and there's creating," team co-owner Eddie Wood once explained. "If you're caught, people inside know you were just creating. It's the people outside who call it cheating. Everybody who's ever had a race car has been there and done that. If they say they haven't, they're lying."
<fstl:embedded contentid="7042832" ordinal="5" type="Image"></fstl:embedded>
Nykesha Sales, UConn career scoring record
In 1998, University of Connecticut women's basketball star Nykesha Sales suffered an Achilles tendon injury that ended her senior season. She was one basket short of a new school scoring record of 2,178 points.
So UConn coach Geno Auriemma conspired with Villanova coach Harry Peretta to allow Sales to score that basket. At the start of the game, Sales went onto the court wearing a cast and scored an uncontested layup to start the game.
Then UConn returned the favor, allowing Villanova to score an uncontested layup of its own to tie the game 2-2. That business out of the way, the teams then started playing for real and Sales had her record.
"She never asked for it, never wanted it, and years from now I'm going to pin her down and go, 'tell me the truth, did you really want to tell me to go jump in the lake and didn't want to?'" Auriemma later said. "I don't know, I'm afraid to ask her that question."
USSR basketball gold medal, 1972 Olympics
The U.S. had never lost a basketball game in the Olympics until facing the Soviets in the 1972 finals at Munich. The U. S. record was 62-0 heading into the gold medal game.
The Americans believed they had beaten the Soviets 50-49 in a hard-fought game. They rallied fiercely and scored the would-be winning points with three seconds left on two Doug Collins free throws. The Russians had one last chance to win, but they were unable to get off a shot as time expired.
<fstl:embedded contentid="7042832" ordinal="4" type="Image"></fstl:embedded>
As the U.S. team celebrated its victory, game officials conferred and decided to give the Soviets a second chance to win the game. R. William Jones, the secretary-general of the International Amateur Basketball Federation, ordered three seconds be put back on the clock.
Russian player Ivan Edeshko was then able to threw a long pass to Alexander Belov, who scored the winning basket and made hoops history. The U.S. appealed the decision to the five-man Jury of Appeal, but three of the judges were from Soviet-bloc countries. Case closed.
The U.S. players never accepted their silver medals. "If we had gotten beat, I would be proud to display my silver medal today," team member Mike Bantom later said. "But, we didn't get beat, we got cheated."
Gordie Howe's sixth decade of hockey
The man known as "Mr. Hockey" did many unique things in a professional career that started in 1946 and ended in 1980 ? with a brief retirement during early 1970s his only hiatus. He set many NHL records that Wayne Gretzky would break and helped launch the World Hockey Association.
When the WHA merged with the NHL, Howe played one last season at the age of 51. As a promotional gimmick, the Detroit Vipers of the International Hockey League signed him to a one-game contract in 1997. He played one shift at the age of 69, without touching the puck, and pushed his career into a sixth decade.
This was similar to the stunt baseball legend Minnie Minoso participated to "extend" his career.
Yelena Berezhnaya and Anton Sikharulidze, 2002 gold medal
Olympic figure skating judging has been nearly as outrageous as boxing judging over the years. A classic case saw Berezhnaya and Sikharulidze win the gold in Salt Lake City over Canadians Jamie Sale and David Pelletier.
The judging didn't seem as egregiously wrong as in the case of Roy Jones Jr. ... until French judge Marie-Reine Le Gougne admitted she favored the Russians after being pressured into a score-swapping scheme. Officials sent her home from the Winter Games, banished her from judging and awarded the Canadians duplicate gold medals in an unprecedented move. As in the Roy Jones Jr. case, controversy forced reforms how these Olympic events are judged.
"Justice was done," Pelletier said at the time. "It doesn't take away anything from Elena and Anton. This was not something against them. It was something against the system."
Argentina's 1986 World Cup victory
Diego Maradona was magnificent while leading his homeland to this championship. He set up the game-winning goal in the final against West Germany. He scored twice in a semifinal victory over Belgium.
He scored one of the greatest goals ever during a quarterfinal victory over England, dribbling through frozen foes as if they were pylons.
But he also scored the "Hand of God" goal against the Brits, using the back of his fist to punch the ball past goalkeeper Peter Shilton. This proved to be the decisive goal in a 2-1 victory.
Tunisian referee Ali Bennaceur missed the violation. Nearly 20 years later, Maradona finally admitted that the "Hand of God" goal was just an ordinary hand ball that the ref missed.
"Never did I regret having scored in that way," he said.
FOX Sports on MSN - More Sports - Top 11 tainted sports achievements
