Nothing rivals a good sporting scandal, a salacious story of deceit, or good old-fashioned cheating, to set millions of tongues wagging and cause chaos in the newsrooms around the world. The biggest sporting scandals hit you with a thud when you first hear about them, and force a double take as you read the headline, before Whatsapp groups ping and pub chat escalates.
At Boss Hunting, we’re more than partial towards a controversy or two, so we took a closer look at a few of our favourites. Ranking the top 21 sporting scandals of the 21st century wasn’t easy, but we’ve done our best, from an Australian perspective to boot.
The Biggest 21 Sporting Scandals Of The 21st Century:
21. Bloodgate
In 2009, controversy erupted in the English rugby union. Harlequins winger Tom Williams feigned an injury using a fake blood capsule so his team could have another break in play late in a match. The same practice – where the doctor cut the player’s lip a few minutes earlier – had occurred in four previous matches and saw Williams ultimately banned for four months. The club was fined close to half-a-million dollars and the CEO resigned in disgrace.
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20. Cronulla Sharks Doping Scandal
Sports scientist Stephen Dank kept no records of the substances he injected into 17 players implicated in this almighty stuff-up. He later conceded he gave the rugby league players two growth hormone-releasing peptides, which were banned by the world anti-doping code. The club was blown up, much like Essendon Football club was in similar circumstances, which we’ll get into further down this list.
19. Biogenesis Baseball Scandal
This was another drugs scandal, this time in Major League Baseball. In July 2013, thirteen players received long bans for taking performance-enhancing drugs from a now-defunct company called Biogenesis of America. Alex Rodriguez, who used of testosterone and human growth homes, was the highest profile of the 13 players.
18. Melbourne Football Club Sort Of Guilty of Tanking
To understand this, you need to understand tanking. At the Melbourne Football Club in 2009, the players tried hard, but the coaches picked weird teams and played certain individuals out of position. Allegedly, this was to minimise the chances of winning in order to finish lower on the ladder and receive higher-placed draft picks.
The AFL, in a heavily criticised outcome, found the club not guilty of tanking but certain individuals guilty of “acting in a manner prejudicial to the interests of the competition. The club was fined $500,000, while the coach and General Manager of Footy were suspended.
17. Spain Cheats To Win Paralympic Gold
This has to be read to be believed. Spain, desperate to win gold in basketball at the 2000 Paralympics, selected players with no mental disability. Of course, they won. The final team had two players with IQs below 70 as mandated, but the others were imposters. When the scandal was uncovered, the players were forced to return their gold medals and basketball was removed from future Paralympics.
16. Kobe Bryant Charged With Sexual Assault
Basketball great Bryant was accused of sexually assaulting a 19-year-old in his hotel room in July 2003. Bryant claimed the sex was consensual and although he ultimately apologised to the alleged victim, he always denied sexually assaulting her. The case was dropped after his accuser refused to testify in the case.
15. Nick Kyrgios Tells Stan Wawrinka How It Is
We love Nick Kyrgios, but even he admitted he went a bit too far with a sledge directed at Stan Wawrinka in 2015. As the Aussie was walking past Wawrinka, he told him “Kokkinakis banged your girlfriend. Sorry to tell you that mate.” His words were picked up by the TV microphones and sent the tennis world into a spin, so to speak.
Kyrgios was fined $10,000 and eventually apologised on Twitter. The woman at the centre of the scandal, Croatian tennis player Donna Vekic, remained dignified, while Wawrinka was distraught and said so on social media.
14. Stilnox Six Swimmers
Australia’s worst Olympics swimming performance in two decades at the 2012 Games was punctuated by a troubling admission of drug use. Look, it technically wasn’t considered performance enhancing to take sleeping tablets, but before they arrived in London the Australian Olympic Committee put Stilnox on the banned substance list. “We stand here collectively to confirm that we did take part in a bonding exercise during which members of the relay team took Stilnox,” the six swimmers said in a joint statement.
13. Shane Warne Suspended For 12 Months
We’ll take the late great Shane Warne at his word when he said he never purposefully took illicit substances, but as he returned from a shoulder injury before the 2003 World Cup, Warne’s mum gave him a pill to help with his weight. Unfortunately for Warne, it was also considered a masking agent for illegal drugs. At the peak of his powers, The King had to sit in the stands for a year. We can’t think of what else he did in that 12-month period to pass the time…
12. Melbourne Storm Cheated To Win The NRL Premiership
This is undoubtedly the greatest salary cap cheating episode in world sport. They were found to be $3.78 million over the salary cap across a five-year period, with several under-the-table payments made to keep their best players at the club. They initially denied the allegations, before admitting to everything. Melbourne Storm was stripped of its 2007 and 2009 premierships.
11. Hanse Cronje’s Tearful Admission
South Africa’s much-loved cricket captain was busted for accepting money in return for manipulating results in international matches. The key game was against England when he received a six-figure sum to orchestrate either a win for the opposition or a win for his own team. It couldn’t be a draw.
This incentive led to some bizarre tactics and an eventual tearful admission in court. Disgraced forever, he was banned for life from professional sport.
10. Deflategate
This 2015 controversy involved all-time NFL great Tom Brady and the suggestion – which was later proved to be correct – that his team deflated footballs so they were easier for him to throw, grip and teammates to catch. It rocked the league and Brady was handed a four-game ban.
9. King Carey Does The Unthinkable
Some argue Wayne Carey is the greatest AFL player of all time, but at the very least he was the most iconic player of the 1990s. It was inconceivable what he did to a teammate and Kangaroos vice-captain Anthony Stevens, and even more staggering where it took place.
At a Sunday barbeque at another teammate’s house, Carey slept with Stevens’ wife. It turned out they’d been having an affair for a while. Carey left the club in disgrace and Stevens has never quite recovered.
8. Adam Goodes Booed Out Of Football
This hugely undignified scandal forced Adam Goodes into retirement and saw him decline entry into the Australian Football Hall of Fame in 2021. It began when Goodes was racially abused by a girl in the front row of the MCG during a game, continued when he performed a misinterpreted war dance in a game against Carlton and took a weird twist when Collingwood president Eddie McGuire made a racial remark about King Kong on the radio in reference to the saga.
Despite pleas from key figures, Goodes was booed around the country and the AFL refused to condemn these jeers until years later. As one of Sydney’s greatest ever players, Goodes’ exit from the sport remains one of the sorriest episodes in modern football history.
7. Reeva, Is That You?
This scandal is unlucky not to be higher. There was no Paralympian more famous a decade ago than Oscar Pistorius. The South African ‘Blade Runner’ was ultimately found guilty of shooting and killing his model girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp through a toilet door on Valentine’s Day, 2013. He is now eligible for parole but is still in prison after being sentenced to 13 years and five months behind bars. His denial was based on his belief he was shooting an intruder, not his partner.
6. Essendon Drugs Saga
Essendon Football Club is still feeling the aftershock of the most tumultuous period in the club’s 150-year history. No less than 34 players were banned for 12 months, and the coach – James Hird – was too. Nobody quite knows exactly what those 34 players were injected with at an off-site location in 2012. That alone is staggeringly poor governance. What we do know is Jobe Watson lost his Brownlow Medal and Hird lost his coaching career.
5. Newsflash: Yes, FIFA Was Corrupt
We all knew it, let’s be honest. The practice of buying votes for World Cup hosting duties was going on for years. It all blew up when seven FIFA officials were arrested in 2015 and the reputation of President Seb Blatter was forever tarnished. Lots of countries, including Australia, were implicated and major reforms were passed at FIFA to make sure all future World Cups were awarded fairly moving forward.
4. Australia’s Ball Tampering
An Australian cricketer cheating? You bet it. What we know for sure is in 2018 David Warner instructed Cameron Bancroft on how to rough up one side of the ball with sandpaper in South Africa. The illegal practice was caught on camera and Warner was banned for 12 months, Bancroft for nine months and captain Steve Smith for 12 months as a result of turning a blind eye.
What may never come out until Warner’s autobiography is who else knew. The scandal rocked the foundations of Australian cricket at all levels. Values such as integrity, fairness and sportsmanship were thrown out as the nation’s trust in its senior male player’s haemorrhage.
3. Russians Just Don’t Learn Do They?
If not for Lance Armstrong, this would be the most regimented and coordinated doping operation of all time. It was still pretty bloody big and resulted in 46 Olympic medals being stripped from Russian athletes. The doping regime was state-sponsored, and for two years from December 17, 2020, no athlete can represent Russia at an Olympics, Paralympics or World Championship.
2. Tiger Woods Is Not The Man You Thought He was
First, there was one. Then there were two. In the end, there were a reported 120 women who came forward and said Tiger Woods had had sex with them while he was married. The previously untouchable Woods had indeed been touched more than any of us – including his wife – knew. It halted his career as he was dominating and tarnished his reputation forever. Woods remains an iconic figure in golf, but a different man from what we thought he was before the scandal broke in late 2009.
1. Lance Armstrong Is Officially A Cheat
The seven-time Tour De France winner was stripped of all his titles and given a lifetime ban in 2012. It was gigantic news and rocked the sporting world, especially given how fierce Armstrong had been in his denials. In an interview with Oprah Winfrey in 2013, he admitted to using banned substances for the majority of his career. He was the figurehead of his team’s blood doping and it’s probably not a stretch to suggest he is considered the biggest liar in the history of sports.
