Cheating in Paralympics: How the Spanish Paralympics Basketball team won gold
There have been people trying to cheat at sports ever since they started competing in them. The desire to achieve something and become world famous sometimes throws ethics and morals out the window. Cheating takes place in almost all forms of sports but
it is very surprising to see that it also takes place at the biggest sporting event for the disabled; the Paralympics. Disabled people are just the same as everyone else and some of them will try to cheat whenever they have the opportunity to do so. One of
the strangest and saddest cases of cheating occurred at the 2000 Paralympics Games held in Sydney when a Spanish basketball team was found out to be made up almost entirely of cheaters.
The Paralympics Games started out as the Stoke Mandeville Games which were started by Dr. Ludwig Guttmann in 1947. These Games grew and evolved to become the Paralympics Games of today. They are a very popular format of athletic competition which sees many
disabled athletes competing against each other for gold medals and pride. Over the years the Paralympics has become more and more popular among sports fans and the Games now attract a record number of spectators to watch and be part of them.
The spirit of the Games is to bring about a sort of equality in athletics and show the world that disabled athletes are just as capable as anyone else to compete at a sport. Various sports have been modified to be contested by disabled athletes and the most
popular of these is wheelchair basketball. The sport was one of the founding athletic disciplines set up by Dr. Ludwig in the 40s to bring about an active change in the lives of his paraplegic patients. Wheelchair basketball was one of the first sports to
be included in the inaugural Stoke Mandeville Games in 1947. It has now spread around the world and is the most widely played disabled sport in the world.
At the 2000 Paralympics Games held in Sydney, the Spanish team won gold in wheelchair basketball. They dominated the competition and sometimes were 30 points ahead of other teams in the competition. After the team won gold medals at the Games, their pictures
started appearing in newspapers around the world. Several stories were published in the Spanish press and this turned out to be the downfall of the Spanish basketball team; that and the fact that there was an undercover journalist playing on the team as well.
In 2000 and the years before that, the Paralympics allowed people with learning disabilities and low IQs to be part of disabled teams. It was under the guise of having learning difficulties and low IQs that 10 members of the Spanish team who were actually
normal people competed in the Paralympics. One of them was Carlos Ribagorda, who is a journalist in Spain. He was signed up and decided to go along and expose the truth on his return. Only 2 members of the 12-man squad actually had learning difficulties and
the rest of them were absolutely fine. The team went to Spain and returned home with the gold medal. But they were recognised in Spain after their pictures appeared in the papers and they had to wear disguises upon their return to their country.
Once the team arrived back in Spain, Ribagorda exposed the truth and the lid was lifted on the whole sordid affair. Even though the team was branded as cheats and the whole Spanish Paralympics committee was penalised, the scandal had far reaching effects.
After the event, the Paralympics were seriously tarnished; the image of the Games was tainted and the management and operations of the Games was called into question. The governing body of the Paralympics took the harsh decision to ban people with learning
difficulties and low IQs from competing in any further events. So the actions of a team of cheats actually affected innocent disabled athletes who had done nothing wrong. Some even pointed fingers at the top man in Spain’s Paralympics Committee, Fernando Martín
Vicente. He had been accused of making money off of disabled athletics for a number of years but nothing had been proven.
This dirty scandal ruined wheelchair basketball and destroyed the hopes and dreams of many aspiring disabled athletes. All it took was the actions of a few corrupt and morally bankrupt men to tarnish a wonderful event and a great sport.
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