Every sport, regardless of the level, provides opportunities for athletes to bend the rules, ignore the rules, and just cheat to benefit themselves or their team. Cheating is an unfortunate part of the sports world and has been occurring for centuries. There is even evidence of it taking place in the ancient Olympic Games – during the 98th Olympiad in 388 BCE, a boxer bribed his opponents to let him win.
The most recent 2024 Paris Olympic Games was no different. Allegations of cheating, misconduct, or other deceits have already surfaced. As unfortunate as this is, cheating has been prevalent in many sports and it should come as no surprise that athletes will do anything it takes to secure a victory. while many athletes discover ethical ways to give them the edge, others take the immoral route and resort to cheating. It is these individuals that taint an otherwise respectable image of the majority of athletes.
This list demonstrates the many methods athletes have used to cheat, or even fake their way into the Olympic Games. As many have been caught using performance-enhancing drugs, these incidents barely factor into our choices. Instead, we chose athletes who used even stranger, weirder, and shameful tactics to get that much closer to victory. Some athletes were entangled in the heat of the moment and cheated while otherwise competing fairly. Others used loopholes and technicalities to get to the games.
To compile a list of Olympic athletes caught cheating during the Games, 24/7 Tempo consulted a range of sports, history, and news publications including History.co.uk, Outlook India, and The Guardian. We then selected athletes or athletic teams caught cheating before, during, or after their appearances in the Olympic Games. From there, we confirmed aspects of each story using sites like Olympics.com, CBSSports.com, and ABCNews.com.
For other instances of athletes cheating, discover some of the wildest sports scandals.
Dora Ratjen
Though a current scandal regarding intersex athletes arose at the 2024 Paris Olympics, it isn’t the first time it has happened. During the tense 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin, Dora Ratjen finished fourth in the women’s high jump competition. Two years later, she set a world record for the high jump at the European Athletics Championships.
In response, the previous world record holder Dorothy Tyler-Odam accused her of being a man. In 1939, a train conductor reported a man dressed as a woman on his train. Police pulled Ratjen in for questioning, where Ratjen produced papers officially showing she was a woman. Doctors, however, concluded her to be a man.
As a born intersex person, Ratjen’s sexual identity was biologically ambiguous, making her both a man and a woman depending on the tests performed. The scandal, however, was exposed after Ratjen tearfully admitted that the Nazis forced them to pose as a woman for the glory of Germany. As they put it, “For three years I lived the life of a girl. It was most dull.”
According to multiple reports, the Nazis did not want to upset Adolf Hitler by a Jewish athlete winning the gold medal for Germany, so they forced Ratjen to pose as a woman. Other reports dispute this telling of events, leaving the true story and reasoning behind Ratjen’s choices a mystery.
Badminton Teams
It’s not always individual athletes who get caught cheating at the Olympic Games. Sometimes, entire teams get exposed. At the 2012 Summer Olympic Games in London, officials disqualified eight badminton players for intentionally losing matches during the group stage of the competition. One pair of female badminton players from China, two from South Korea, and one from Indonesia faced controversy after throwing matches to secure more favorable quarterfinal matchups.
First, Chinese top seeds Yu Yang and Wang Xiaoli faced off against competitors Jung Kyung-eun and Kim Ha-na from South Korea. After repeatedly hitting shots wide or into the net, spectators booed them. The fixing became so obvious that a referee came onto the court to warn the players over their conduct. When the South Koreans won, it made it so that Yang and Xiaoli Yu avoided facing their Chinese teammates until the final, ensuring a Chinese medal.
To make matters worse, another South Korean pair pulled the same tactic when facing off against Indonesians Meiliana Jauhari and Greysia Polii. While the Koreans eventually won the match, a referee threatened them with disqualification for their unethical strategy.
Chinese player Yu Yang defended her team’s conduct, saying “Actually, these opponents really were strong. This is the first time we have played them, and tomorrow it’s the knockout rounds. So we’ve already qualified, and we wanted to have more energy for the knockout rounds.” Meanwhile, the South Korean team blamed the Chinese, with head coach Sung Han-kook saying “If they played right, the Chinese team, this wouldn’t happen, so we did the same.”
Olympic officials, however, remained unconvinced. In response to the various match-fixing, the Olympics ejected each offending team from the competition for “conducting themselves in a way that was abusive and detrimental to the sport.”
Tunisian Modern Pentathlon Team
Not all Olympians are champions. Some fare so badly that they become the stuff of legend instead. Take the Tunisian modern pentathlon team, for example. During the 1960 Rome Summer Olympics, the Tunisian team underwent a comedy of errors, moments of tragedy, and eventually a cheating strategy to ensure victory. Competing in the modern pentathlon requires incredible skill and variety.
To succeed, athletes must excel in shooting, swimming, fencing, equestrian show jumping, and running. First created by modern Olympics founder Pierre de Coubertin, he thought “the event would test a man’s/woman’s moral qualities as much as his physical resources and skills, thereby producing the ideal, complete athlete.”
Tunisian athletes Lakdar Bouzid, Habib Ben Azzabi, and Ahmed Ennachi failed to reach that ideal. Early in the competition, during the swimming race, one Tunisian athlete needed rescue from the pool after nearly drowning. Upon entering the equestrian part of the contest, every Tunisian rider was thrown off their horses, leaving them to squirm on the ground as competitor’s horses raced around them. During the fencing competition, the Tunisian athletes were caught cheating.
While one team member was quite a good fencer, the others were not. After the skilled member won, the Tunisian team attempted to sneak him back in for two more fencing bouts, hoping the face mask would obscure their deception. Pretty quickly, officials disqualified the Tunisian pentathlon team from the fencing part of the contest. By the time it ended, the Tunisian team finished with 5,126 points, nearly 10,000 points below the winning country.
Spanish Basketball Team at the Paralympics
In one of the most despicable instances of athletes caught cheating during the Olympic Games, the Spanish Paralympic basketball team faked multiple disabilities to win the gold medal at the 2000 Sydney Games. Head coach Fernando Martin Vicente allowed athletes without disabilities to compete in the games.
After beating Russia in the finals, the Spanish team ostensibly won gold. Officials quickly stripped them of their medals after the International Paralympic Committee (IPC) discovered that none of the Spanish players underwent mental tests that required competitors to have an IQ no higher than 75.
Remarkably, Carlos Ribagorda, a member of the team and an undercover reporter, helped expose the extent of deception. He said, “The aim of this policy was to win medals and gain more sponsorship.” While the Spanish team initially denied such allegations, they issued a public apology after the IPC confirmed that 10 of the 12 competitors in the winning team were not disabled. A few weeks later, the Spanish team was officially disqualified and forced to return their gold medals.
While it put a blight on the Spanish competitors, it also had far-reaching effects on well-meaning Paralympic athletes. In the wake of the scandal, the IPC suspended all official competitions involving intellectual disabilities. It took nearly a decade for the committee to reformulate tests for confirming intellectual issues.
Finally, in 2009, the IPC allowed intellectually disabled athletes to compete again. Thanks to the Spanish basketball team’s immoral strategy, dozens of intellectually disabled athletes were prevented from competing for years.
Spiridon Belokas
As this list will show you, cheating seemed a lot easier before the widespread use of cameras. Even still, many athletes get caught cheating during the Olympic Games. Take Spiridon Belokas, for example. A native of Greece born in Athens, Belokas entered the first modern Olympic Games in 1896 as a marathon runner.
One of 17 athletes competing in that year’s marathon race, Belokas finished the contest in third place behind other Greek runners Spiridon Louis and Charilaos Vasilako. It seemed like the Greeks had completely edged out the competition, taking home the top three prizes for the glory of their home country and the country hosting the first Olympic Games.
Though the Olympic Committee initially awarded Belokas a bronze medal, they quickly discovered that Belokas cheated. Indeed, it seems that Belokas skipped a good section of the course traveling by horse-drawn carriage instead of by foot. In response, the International Olympic Committee officially disqualified Belokas and awarded his bronze medal to fourth-place Hungarian runner Gyula Kellner instead.
Fred Lorz
Before entering the Olympics and earning a bad reputation, runner Fred Lorz had a relatively inspiring origin story. Born and raised in New York City, Lorz laid bricks by day and trained by night. After scoring in the top eight at a “special seven-mile race” in Celtic Park, Lorz earned a spot at the 1904 Summer Olympic Games in St. Louis.
Once he entered the marathon race, however, Lorz gave up running after 9 miles due to exhaustion. Instead of taking a rest and continuing, Lorz’s manager picked him up in a car and drove him 11 miles down the course. Once the car broke down, he set back out on foot and got to the finish line first.
While officials declared Lorz the winner, many spectators claimed he did not run the entire race. After angry officials confronted him about the allegations, Lorz admitted to the deception, claiming it was a practical joke. In short order, the Amateur Athletic Union banned him for life, though this was later reduced to six months after Lorz formally apologized.
Such cheating seemed unnecessary, however, as Lorz legitimately won the Boston Marathon a year later in 1905. Ultimately, it’s hard to judge this early Olympic marathon as rules were flimsier back then. Case in point: while Thomas Hicks was declared the actual winner of the 1904 Olympic marathon, he too used unconventional tactics to earn a top spot.
Allegedly, Hicks walked part of the course and was carried by his trainers for another section. Furthermore, he dosed himself with known poison strychnine to ensure better performance.
Elizabeth Swaney
The story of Elizabeth Swaney is a good litmus test for where you stand on doing what it takes to fulfill Olympic dreams. Some decry underhanded tactics while others are willing to use any tool at their disposal to give themselves a fighting chance at victory. After earning a graduate degree from Harvard University, Swaney took up freestyle skiing. After five years of adequate training, Swaney hatched a scheme to make it to the Olympics.
She knew she would never make it onto the ultra-competitive USA skiing team. So, Swaney played Olympic technicalities like a fiddle instead, ensuring she would make it to the Games. She decided to ski for her mother’s native country of Venezuela. Not long after, she switched to Hungary, where her grandparents were born, further improving her odds of making it.
With few competitors in Hungary, Swaney gained a better chance of meeting International Ski Federation requirements and qualifying for the Olympics. As long as she completed even the most basic runs without crashing, her points would accumulate and slowly push her up the rankings. It also helped that the 24 quota spots for women’s ski halfpipe function on a per-country basis, limiting the total number of athletes. Plus, each country can only send a maximum of four female skiers.
Remarkably, Swaney’s scheme worked and she earned a spot at the 2018 Pyeongchang Winter Olympics. While she didn’t come close to placing, much less winning a medal, she followed through with her ethically questionable dream. In response, many female skiers who were forced to sit out the games due to the quota system criticized her technicality strategy as making a mockery of the Games.
Madeline and Margaret de Jesús
Sometimes, athletes cheat during the Olympic Games in ways that resemble the plot of a movie. During the 1984 Los Angeles Summer Olympics, Madeline de Jesús represented Puerto Rico in numerous track and field events. She seemed to be faring well for the first few events. During the long jump competition, however, de Jesús tore her hamstring badly.
Unwilling to opt out of the upcoming 4×400 relay event and miss her chance at Olympic glory, she decided to hatch a simple but ingenious scheme. Since her twin sister Margaret de Jesús was also an athlete competing during the Olympics, she could have Margaret compete in the relay for her without anyone the wiser.
Oddly enough, it worked. Madeline simply switched outfits with Margaret and let her enter the 4×400 relay race. Unfortunately for the sisters, the Puerto Rican running coach quickly uncovered their ruse. In response, he pulled the entire Peurto Rican team from the event.
Once the Olympic Committee found out, they handed down suspensions for their unknowing teammates. As for Madeline and Margaret de Jesús, they received bans from all future international competitions. (For great sports moments free from controversy, discover the most iconic moments in Summer Olympics history.)
Marion Jones
There is cheating through unconventional and deceptive strategies and there is cheating the good, old-fashioned way: steroids. During the 2000 Sydney Summer Olympics, American track and field athlete Marion Jones catapulted to fame after winning three gold medals and two bronze medals. Suspicions quickly fell on Jones, however, after her shot-putter husband C.J. Hunter tested positive for steroids.
Once exposed, Hunter testified under oath that he watched his wife inject drugs into her stomach at the Olympic Village in Sydney. For her part, Jones vehemently denied all steroid allegations. She stayed under the radar long enough to compete in the 2004 Athens Summer Olympics where she performed much worse, placing fifth in the long jump and last in the women’s 4x100m relay.
Though she explicitly denied all steroid rumors in every interview she gave, a scandal was brewing. In 2004, an expose showed that the Bay Area Laboratory Co-operative (BALCO) supplied then-undetectable steroids to numerous star athletes including professional baseball players like Barry Bonds. Later, more evidence came to light showing a far wider range of involved athletes including Jones.
After enough evidence received confirmation, the justice system got involved. This seemed to incentivize Jones into finally admitting the truth about her steroid use in previous competitions. On Oct. 5, 2007, Jones admitted to lying under oath to federal agents and pleaded guilty to her involvement in the BALCO scandal. In response, the International Olympic Committee stripped Jones of all her medals.
Boris Onischenko
Soviet pentathlete Boris Onischenko made solid headway in multiple Olympic Games. At the 1968 Summer Olympics in Mexico City, he won a team silver medal. Four years later, Onischenko won a team gold and an individual silver medal. At 38 years old, he entered the 1976 Summer Olympics in Montreal.
While he acted as a three-time world champion, he had not yet earned an individual gold medal. After that year’s first pentathlon event, the Soviet Union sat in fourth place, closely trailing behind Great Britain. For the next event, fencing, Onishchenko faced off against British team captain Jim Fox.
During the match, however, the British team accused Onishchenko of registering hits while his saber swung freely in the air. Further examination of his weapon found it to be faulty, which deduced points from his score. Though the British team filed an official protest, the match continued unabated and Onishchenko easily won. As the Soviets secured their victory, the British team stewed, demanding an official examination of Onishenko’s all-too-sensitive fencing equipment.
After the match, the British team found their recourse. Olympic officials quickly realized that Onischenko’s épée fencing sword featured subtle but undeniably illegal modifications. The modifications allowed him to close the weapon’s electrical circuit without actually touching his opponent. Instantly, it registered a touch or hit on his opponent, and therefore, a point.
In response, the Olympics ejected Onischenko, and the Soviet Union withdrew from the event entirely lest they face further scrutiny. Newspapers lambasted him for his misconduct, calling him things like “Onischenko the Cheat.” Reportedly, Onischenko later received a summons to the Kremlin. He stood in front of Soviet state leader Leonid Brezhnev, who personally scolded him for his cheating. (For stories of athletic inspiration, discover the greatest comeback stories in Summer Olympic history.)