Dan Snow's History Hit - A History of Cheating at the Olympics

Episode Date: July 29, 2024

Dan is joined by the QI Elves James Harkin and Anna Ptaszynski to talk about cheating in sports as the 2024 Olympics get underway. Why do we do it and how far back does it go? From the man who jumped into a car during the 1904 Olympic marathon to the Puerto Rican twins who swapped places in the Los Angeles Games long jump, here are some of the most audacious stories.James Harkin and Anna Ptaszynski have a new book called 'A Load of Old Balls: A QI History of Sport'Produced by Mariana Des Forges and edited by Max Carrey.Enjoy unlimited access to award-winning original documentaries that are released weekly and AD-FREE podcasts. Sign up HERE for 50% off for 3 months using code ‘DANSNOW’.We'd love to hear from you - what do you want to hear an episode on? You can email the podcast at [e-mail] can take part in our listener survey here.

Hi buddy, welcome to Dan Snow's History Hit. In 1841, in Lancashire, in England, there was a mighty sporting showdown. Two pub football teams called the Bodyguards and the Fearnauts. As so often happens when English teams play each other, there was a goalless draw. Now we're not talking medieval pub football here. This is not acts of homicidal violence, villages attacking villages, with the football being only a convenient excuse of sticking it to your neighbours. Now, this was a reasonably proper game of football, evidenced by the fact that at one point, a bodyguards player was so tired that he brought a spectator onto the field to take a kick for him, a free kick or a

penalty. Now the referee decided that this was foul play, according to the rules agreed by each party, and he awarded the victory, and the prize, which was a barrel of gin obviously, to the fear noughts. This is one of the earliest well-attested examples of cheating in modern sport. I learned it from those excellent fellow citizens who spend their time deep in the content shaft, mining away at rich seams of facts, the QI elves. They're the hosts of No Such Thing As A Fish, James Harkin and Anna Tashinsky. They've just brought out a brilliant book in time for this great festival of sports that we're going to enjoy this summer. The Olympics.

Their book is called A Load of Old Balls, The QI History of Sport. And to celebrate the Olympiad, to enjoy the victory, the defeat, the certain prospect of cheating, I thought we'd get Anna and James on the podcast to talk about cheating. why we do it, how far back does it go, and what are some of the most egregious examples. You're gonna love it,

folks. This is our Olympic special on cheating in sports. Enjoy. God save the king. No black-white unity till there is first and black unity. Never to go to war with one another again. And lift off, and the shuttle has cleared the tower. Anna and James, Podcasting Royalty, thank you very much for coming on the podcast. Thanks for having us. Thank you very much for having us.

Look, I'm asking for a friend. I'm asking for a friend, but why do we cheat? If we win, but then we know that we cheated not to win, like why did we get the buzz? You know, tell me. Go on, Anna. You're an expert in this. Well, I think it's kind of paradoxical, right? Because evidence shows that we get a big psychological high out of cheating and out of winning when we cheat. But also, there have been other studies that show that once people do see that they've won and they've cheated, they then do feel bad about it, and then they'll stop cheating. So it is confusing. I think that the most interesting thing, and that will probably ring true for everyone listening, and this is why cheating is so prevalent in sports at the level that we see them, is that the better you are at something, the high achievers are the ones who are much more likely to try and get even better. And I guess it's because of that pressure that's on you. Part of your identity is,

I'm really good at this thing. And so you're just so desperate to stay good at that thing and be better than everyone else because that's who you are. That's how you define that you cheat to get there. Whereas if you're not very good, you don't really mind. And also, I suppose, things with completely artificial rules, like if you jump on this line and then do a twist and then land on that line, you get a special little bit of shiny metal. Or indeed, politics. When there are these kind of very weird artificial rules, that invites cheating. When I go out sailing, I can't cheat because you either get smashed into the rocks or you don't. But triple jump, I don't want to pick out triple jump, but like, or setting in politics, like pretending there's not a border in the Irish Sea and to get votes. Like that is

something, there is an invitation to cheat on those occasions, right? Yeah, there is. But also, I think there's like an inherent sort of fairness that is in humans that we hate cheaters. I think that's the kind of thing. It's really important to everyone else. If someone cheats, then everyone else feels like they're badly done to. So there was a study with capuchin monkeys where, you know, they got them to do a task, whether it was triple jump or sailing or whatever. I can't remember, but they got them to do a task and they gave them a cucumber as a reward, which they were really happy with. But when they saw someone else doing the same task and getting some really delicious grapes, they just threw an absolute hissy fit because they're like, why did I not get the grapes? Why did I get the cucumber?

And it feels like there's an inherent sort of fairness in humans and obviously in our ape brethren, which means that we really hate cheaters. Yeah, it's so interesting, isn't it? Because we both really admire sporting feats. And then we just hate cheaters. Like you think about Barry Bonds in the States, his home run record or Lance Armstrong. There were so many Lance Armstrong stands up.

They're like people just wearing the same clothes and getting the same tattoos and wearing those little yellow things and and then when they found out he cheated everyone just got so unbearable like you know lads my age sort of you know young into middle-aged dads just kind of had it was like their idol had just fallen it's like guys the guy was peddling a bike like I don't know it's so funny how we build them up so much and we're so angry when they cheat. It's really interesting, isn't it? And I have the same reaction as you. Especially with someone like Lance Armstrong, you think, come on. I mean, I know it's cheating, but he didn't murder loads of people. But I guess that it comes down to, and one of the reasons we

write the book is it comes down to the fact that when you're into sport it is life or death well it's not it's more important than life or death as famously the quote goes and you feel so emotionally invested in it these people are your heroes for whatever reason whether you're escaping from you know the genuine difficulties of life as they exist for many people or just you love that buzz of you know being that togetherness you love these people you worship them and when they do transgress then you feel that buzz of being that togetherness, you love these people, you worship them. And when they do transgress, then you feel that emotional dip. Who's the earliest cheater that you've come across in sporting history? Oh, that's a really good question.

I'm not sure if it's the earliest, but we found a lot of vases and things in the British Museum which show people cheating at pancration so pancration is like uh sort of like the mixed martial arts of of ancient greece where everything was allowed apart from very very few things were banned like grabbing people in the genitals or putting your fingers in their eyes or stuff like that And we found quite a lot of depictions of people doing these cheating moves, and then there being referees next to them who are admonishing them with a stick, or taking away their prizes, or something like that.

And they date back to about 500 BC, so certainly there was cheating then. I think it's got to go back as long as we've been competing, which is almost forever. I think even there are lots of stories about how the Olympics started, but even in the origin story of the Olympics, one of the stories is that it was founded by a ruler who had challenged a king to a chariot race because he wanted to marry the king's daughter. And this was about 3,000 years ago, ancient Greece, wanted to marry the king's daughter. And this was about 3,000 years ago, ancient Greece. He wanted to marry the king's daughter, and he jeopardised the king's chariot. I think he replaced the bits of it that were supposed to be metal with wax, which you wouldn't have thought that would still stand

up as a chariot, but did apparently in the end. And that's the origin of the Olympics. He then took over, married the daughter, became ruler, and instituted the Olympics. So it feels like shooting is so inherently in sport. Well, that's Olympics. So it feels like cheating is so inherently in sport. Well, that's interesting. So it's right there, right from the beginning. You hear stories of ancient athletes, I suppose not cheating, they were using, not abusing, they were using different substances to try and give themselves an advantage, we all hear in the ancient Olympics. But that, of course, at the time was not considered cheating. That was just good pharmacology. Yeah, I think Galen said that you should grind up the rear hooves of an

abyssinian ass boil it in oil and flavor it with rose hips and apparently this is going to give you the boost that you need to win your wrestling or your running competitions you laugh i actually saw usain bolt do that in his hand well usain bolt didn't he he famously ate like 200 chicken nuggets during the Olympics didn't he which doesn't count as doping yet well it should do obviously my kids imbibe chicken nuggets there's some hellish chemical reaction what about I mean Nero it didn't quite happen as it did in the film gladiator but there are examples aren't there sort of Roman emperors entering the arena or the stadium and rigging it so that they come out victorious. In fact, we have an example of a wannabe world leader at the moment

who does very well on the golf course, or so he tells us. And one wonders whether there's a little bit of massaging of conditions or scores, according to him. That's interesting. Is that Mr. Trump we're talking about or mr yeah yeah i just when i was thinking about nero and all the work you've done just for some reason went went to trump the orange nero but anyway so he claims to win golfing matches deep into his late 70s which is very impressive well done him there is just a great book uh which i think i'll call

it great called commander in cheat which is just about trump's golfing history and it interviews everyone who's ever played golf with him and it it is quite extraordinary, the brazenness of it. I mean, literally just writing his name at the top of the leading board or just having his caddy kick out the ball and put it onto the green. Yeah, I've read that book and he would call himself the club champion because he would have a one-on-one game against the current club champion and basically make sure that he won that game by fair means or foul. If he hit a tree with his ball,

he'd put a red cross on it and the groundskeepers would have to come and chop it down for the next time so that he never hit it again. And there were some caddies who would call him Pele because he would so often kick the ball out of the rough if it was in the wrong place. So when i was making

a little gag about nero there but in fact i was far nearer the truth than i knew that's fascinating the sporting arena maybe less his thing but more kind of um artistic competition he used to have a little might like to cheat in those didn't he yeah i think also um didn't nero have his own house at um olympia i think i I went to the Olympia original place where the big stadium is that they used to run across and actually tried to run across it. And it's 200 meters. And I got exhausted after about 40 meters.

No, 200 meters is harder than you think. When you see those guys, you think, how hard can that be? And the answer is very, very hard indeed. But I think he had his own villa that was right next to the stadium because he he did take part in the olympics did he as well it wasn't just dramatics he and poetry he actually he did sport as well he did huh i think didn't he schedule the olympics at a year when

they weren't supposed to be on because it was the only year he was going to be passing through the area so he made them put it on and he rigged it so that he would win the chariot race really and then they immediately undid his victory afterwards really after he died I've got to say people like to poke fun

at dictators and autocrats and things but I mean realistically that's what I do I'm man enough to admit that I would do that like if I was passing

if I was the supreme ruler of their own empire I was like yeah you know yeah for sure and it's like everyone laughs about all the medals they have

I mean I'd love loads of medals. Like, I'd be totally into that. I'd wear all the medals. I'd rig the Olympics and win that. You know, I'm just being honest. You wouldn't mind that they were obtained by nefarious means. Just go for it. Well, I think maybe at the dead of night when I woke up, like all those autocrats, I'd probably be crushed by hellish insecurity. But I think, you know, during the day, you feel all right. Okay. Fine. So that's a bit more about me that we didn't need to know.

So he, okay, so he cheated to win the Olympic. That's really interesting. So there are examples of rulers for kind of political ends cheating all the way back as well. Yeah, definitely. What was the thing, do you remember the thing about, was it Chairman Mao, Anna, who he had his record swim? Oh, his swimming race, yes.

If it was true, the swim that he did and his time that he said, he would have been beating the world record by an unbelievable amount. I think he would have had to have been swimming twice as fast as the person who'd broken the world record at the time. Okay, now you're reminding me, I'm shouting a lot more than I want to in this podcast, but this will be 2002 or something. There was this thing in a magazine, Runner as well because george bush avoided the media and he gave soft interviews people like run as well said he could do a you

know a mile in whatever it was i don't know how many minutes and my cousin and i our act of resistance against this far-right republican was we would go on the track with no training and beat george w bush's time and we and we couldn't really we gave up about 400 meters because the pace was insane we were just drunk students and for hopeless and fat or he was lying george bush was lying about his which i like to think it was the latter i think he cheated i both both seem so plausible maybe a little column a little column little column B. Because I was on the rowing machine in my gym the other day, and I looked at what the world record for the rowing was, and I tried to beat it.

And I got not within five minutes of the 2,000 metres. So I think they might have been lying as well, because it can't possibly be that I couldn't beat that time. James, I think that's just something very dark about men. i think and i think if you want to share your experience here is that the idea that you randomly looked up a world record and thought give it a go that is very that is is that what makes us wonderful is that what makes us deeply deeply tragic and responsible for all the great conflicts in history like what is it about men that do that and maybe that makes come that is linked to cheating, right?

Well, what if I'd have beaten it, though? What if I had this undiscovered talent that I never knew I had? Yes, James, possibly. I would never know unless I try. I think that it definitely does seem to be something, who knows whether it's societal, cultural, physical, but where men do overrate themselves,

I think think compared to experts much more that women do and there's certainly i've never looked up a record of thought i could beat it because my ego couldn't hack the blow when i realized how much worse i am and yeah anna that so that implies you're rational uh and protecting your ego whereas james like you never know maybe i could have beaten you and indeed his response to not beating it was maybe they were cheating yeah or there could have been a problem with the machinery i don't really know there was obviously something going on there but it's like that thing about how um a certain percentage of men reckon that they could get points off serena williams at the tennis which is so unbelievably

ridiculous yeah it's it's absurd i've got embarrassing stories like which i will not share with you but i'm with you, buddy. I'm with you. Looking at world records and having a dig at an activity I've just taken up that very day is something that I'm... I thought that I'd come up with a new way of doing the walking race a few years ago. Yeah, I remember this.

Was it called running? Well, it wasn't quite, because the rule is that you've got to keep one foot on the floor at all time, right? And I came up with this new sort of system where I kind of bent down like a crab and then twisted my hips and stuck my leg out really far and then did it again and again. And I could go really, really fast like that. And I thought I've absolutely nailed it.

And then I realized that I could only do it for about 20 meters before it became so exhausted, I could barely stand up. This is, I mean, that that is completely absurd but you know but the walking race is absurd and that's the point about cheating is you know when they're they've done like a million miles and then they come to the final straight and then the official comes out with a little red dot and goes sorry mate you're you're out because you've you're two feet left the ground or something and they just weep they're like they can't believe it but that's the thing about cheating if you create rules that are most unbelievably restrictive, strange, and arbitrary,

then you're laying such fertile territory for cheating, right? It's like, well, actually, if I lift my toe slightly higher on four successive paces, that's the problem. We're asking people to cheat in those kind of mad events, aren't we? Well, the amazing thing about the walking race is you are allowed to have both feet off the floor you're just not allowed to get caught and the the rules say that it only counts if one of the referees who's on the track notices you doing it so you'll you'll see people kind of really getting very very close to having both feet off at the

same time and that's why i think it's like you're allowed two or three chances before you go out because really everyone gets so close to it and i think i remember when we were historically because it was a big thing walking races at the turn of the 20th century and i think historically the rules also specified you could run as necessary to relieve cramp. Anna. That's right. Anna, funny, engaging, and also gets us back on track. So that is professional broadcasting there.

That's my role. Okay, so the Victorians, well, it's the golden age of codifying all these ridiculous sports that we still care about today for some stupid reason. Rocking our children to bed when penalty shootouts go wrong for England time and again.

Anyway, is that the golden age of cheating as well, would you say? Oh, what a good question. I'm not sure it is. I can't say for sure, but for me, I always associate the cheating more with mid-20th century. Perhaps it's just because it was being recorded more, but when the Olympics came about, suddenly all these different sports proliferated, and sports that maybe people hadn't really had much of a go at until then so as you say a lot of sports had rules where it's so hard to like do anything within them but in these new sports people tried lots of cheats so the tour de france the early history of the tour de france

and the olympics was just so full of stories of people catching trains and buses and getting carriages to the finish line. I think the first Tour de France, it was the guy who came fourth or fifth who ended up winning and he finished three hours after the person who actually won because all of the others had either taken lots and lots of different substances, caught trains. They got their fans to fell trees in the road behind them to make sure that people behind them couldn't get past. They dropped kind of pins on the road to puncture people's wheels.

So I feel like maybe the Olympics, late 19th century, turn of the 20th century, suddenly really took off. You're listening to Dan Snow's History. We're talking about cheating in sport. More coming up definitely I'm Matt Lewis and I'm Dr. Alan Orjanaga and in Gone Medieval

we get into the greatest mysteries the gobsmacking details and latest groundbreaking research from the greatest millennium in human history. We're talking Vikings, Normans, Kings and Popes, who were rarely the best of friends, murder, rebellions, and crusades. Find out who we really were by subscribing to Gone Medieval from History Hit, wherever you get your podcasts. so the Olympics but also then the press fame fortune money sexual opportunity I mean that makes us all want to cheat I mean winning but rather than just being a few gentlemen from

Harvard sort of riding around a circle for honor and excitement, suddenly you're like, if I win, then I'm on easy street. The kids are never going hungry again. because like you had the Fosbury flop moment, which was in high jump where the guy decided to go backwards. And suddenly that was obviously the best way to jump, but you've had that in loads of different sports. And you often come to like, for instance, in javelin, there was the Catalan guy who decided he would spin around and around and around and throw the javelin. And it turned out that when you do that, it's just way, way better. And you can throw it way, way further. And then what always happens when you come up with these new ideas is either they become in the rules and everyone's allowed to do it, or they make a rule against it and no one's allowed to do it. But we always love when we were finding these stories in the book of these people who are right on the edge, who's kind of came up with a new way of

doing things. And then the stories of what came afterwards, whether they, you know, Fosbury became a legend. And then this Erasclas guy who was a Catalan javelin thrower never won another, you know, another javelin contest ever again. James, just think that could have been you, man, with your crab, the crab walking. Exactly. Honestly, this is what I'm thinking, you know. One day.

I've always... The 1904 Olympic marathon, I absolutely love. The previous winner had been disqualified because he jumped in a car, if you say that, Anna, who had driven most of the course. So Thomas Hicks won it. But he was carried in part by supporters or supported by literal supporters.

And then also apparently they gave him two strychnine injections and a, quote, large glass brimming with brandy. Yeah, correct. With some raw eggs, I think, to be fair, to take the edge off that brandy. Are there any, give me some, because you've got some other brilliant examples. Is it Madeleine and Margaret de Gise?

I mean, you've got some great ones. Just rattle through a few of them. I love these old school examples. Those two, Madeleine and Margaret de Geas? I mean, you've got some great ones. Just rattle for a few of them. I love these old school examples. Those two, Madeleine and Margaret, they were the ones who, they were twins, right? Yeah, in the 80s. And didn't one of them replace the other, I think. I say old school.

This is actually not, this is new school. I was alive when this happened. So this is not the 1880s, the 1980s, right? So they're twins. What happens? I think one of them got injured in the in the long jump or the triple jump and they were going to do the sprinting afterwards but because she was injured she couldn't sprint but luckily her twin sister was also a brilliant

sprinter and so her twin sister took part in the race and i think it was a relay and they got through to the final but one of them had a beauty spot on her chin. And one of the journalists knew them well enough that they knew that one of them had a beauty spot and the other one didn't have a beauty spot. And he noticed it and then he kind of flagged them up. And I think quite a few people got banned for that. Come on, just put some foundation on, guys.

I know. We're going through all this trouble. I'm a total total we could do a whole set of poker i'm a sucker for like identical twin still fun interesting weird story that's that's classic qi territory it's funny like with the and i was talking about the pedestrians earlier who were the women who would do these um day long or week-long walks to see who could walk the furthest and at the time it was kind of big in the newspapers. It would be these people have walked for seven days and done however many kilometers.

But a lot of the women who were doing it, the men who were writing about it said they must be cheating. There was no way they could do it. And one of the ways that they claimed that they would be cheating is there was a little tent next to the walking track where you would go in and have a rest every now and then. And what they thought was that they must have been identical twins and they were just swapping places in that tent. And that was the way that the men who were at the time thought that was the only possible way these women could walk for seven days on end. I'm Matt Lewis and I'm Dr. Alan Orjanaga and in Gone Medieval we get into the greatest mysteries

the gobsmacking details and latest groundbreaking research from the greatest millennium in human history we're talking Vikings Normans Kings and Popes who were rarely the best of friends

murder rebellions and crusades find out who we really were by subscribing to gone medieval from history hit wherever you get your podcasts wow that's not cheating no well we don't think so just misogyny quite a lot of that in the history of sport sadly there's it's interesting what you said about you know that when you played for honor back in the olden days maybe it wasn't as investing

and the fact that people play for money because of course like for some people that is just the incentive is that you need to make money so you know you will cheat if you have to but also in that ivy league era when they were already good at sports if you were not one of these big wealthy fit ivy league guys and you were not one of these big, wealthy, fit Ivy League guys and you were playing against them, you did have to come up with other ways of winning. And this is really interesting anyway. There was a Carlisle Indian school in America was founded under this horrendous banner of, I think the slogan was, kill the Indian, save the man. But the idea was that people believe that if they didn't assimilate Native Americans into this now dominant white culture,

then Native Americans would just disappear completely. So there was this rather arrogant idea that was like, kill the Indians and kill that cultural side of them and bring them in to do what we do and you'll save the man and they can just be like us. So the school was created for that purpose. There's lots of Native Americans, but it didn't succeed in doing that because the culture was too strong and they ended up having this amazing football team, which used essentially their wiliness and their smarts to outplay all of these very wealthy, very fit, very fast Ivy Leaguers. And they had this coach called Pop Warner who came up with all these brilliant ideas.

They got someone to sew pictures of American footballs into all of their jerseys so that when they were playing the opposition, Harvard wouldn't know which was the real ball. And then one of them hit the ball and Harvard's going for all of their t-shirts thinking it's the real one. And then they just run and score a touchdown or whatever you call it. But things like that. And I think there's quite a lot of that. The teams that are sort of the underdogs have to bend the rules a little bit or find out where the loopholes are in order to win. Well, also, Anna, that can like change sport completely, can't it? Because do you remember we found out about the Scottish soccer team, football team, who played against England?

And this was one of the first ever internationals between the two teams. And the Scottish team were all from the shipyards and the English team were all from public schools. And the English team were much bigger guys. They were much more well-fed, let's say, put it that way. guys they were much more well fed let's say put it that way and the way that football was played in those days is you would basically get your biggest guy give him the ball and everyone would barge everyone else out of the way but the Scottish because they couldn't really do that they weren't strong enough they came up with the idea of passing and suddenly they were passing it around the English players and if you read the newspaper reports from the time like we did it is

just everyone's like what is going on this is unbelievable this is a brand new way of playing English players. And if you read the newspaper reports from the time, like we did, it is just, everyone's like, what is going on? This is unbelievable. This is a brand new way of playing football. And within a couple of years, all the big teams, especially the working class teams in the North of England, they decided that we were going to go for passing instead of this sort of individualized game of football. And we reckon that that's really where football, as we know it today, started. Like the rules existed before then, but the modern game where everyone knows their position and you pass it around people, that started with that game in Scotland against England.

News has yet to trickle down to the Brockenhurst Badgers under nines. Let me tell you. Zero, zero percent pass completion rate in my, well, both son and daughter, daughter in fact in both of their teams uh they they just like to run with the ball and then there's a massive massive ruck yeah it's so interesting isn't it you kind of think it would be inherent that people would know how to play football but my daughter when she went to her first football training all she wanted to do was go and sit on the ball yeah she is too so i know but i'm

gonna start her early on her yeah she's not breaking those world records at this pace given that that's all they are they're just vessels to vessels for our own defeated ambitions correct yes indeed right so the phenomenon you mentioned earlier about sort of cheating and then rule changes i thought there was a i was interested in in your work on the bobsleigh. Again, that's a silly sport and it's confined by all sorts of arbitrary rules, therefore cheating is just almost encouraged. Tell me how the bobsleigh evolved. Yeah, so, I mean, it evolved basically from people sliding down hills, really. But the great story that we found was about a guy called Anderl Osler, who was in Garmisch-Partenkirchen in 1936, when the Nazi Winter Olympics took place and really got into

Winter Olympics and decided he was going to be a bobsledder. But then, of course, the war happened. And then not only the war happened after the war, people didn't really want Germans to be a bobsledder. But then of course the war happened. And then not only the war happened after the war, people didn't really want Germans to be taking part in sports anymore, as we see today with Russia and all that kind of stuff. So the Germans weren't really accepted into the sport for a long time, but eventually they were allowed into the Winter Olympics. And this guy, he loved bobsledding, but he hadn't really had a chance to do it. And so he started running an inn and put on a lot of weight and ate lots of sausages, presumably, and drank lots of beer.

And he had the skills, but not really the physique. But of course, anyone who's done physics will tell you, if you're going down a hill on ice, one of the main things is your mass. As I've learned when I've tried to do skiing, the bigger your mass, the more difficult it is to stop and the faster you go. And what they found was that they just could get the biggest guys possible into this bobsled and they would fly down the track. And to such an extent where they had two teams and they realised they weren't going to win. And so the Germans decided to put the two heaviest people from one team and the two heaviest people

from another team into this sort of uber heavy bobsled. And they absolutely smashed the opposition. And then after that, they had to put a rule in giving the maximum weight for a bobsled team. Otherwise, they just thought it would be a race to the heaviest. The Germans were quite right. I mean, that sounds to me, that's not rule breaking. That sounds to me common sense.

Baseball is such an extraordinary sport when it comes to cheating for some reason. Take us through some of the most infamous examples of cheating in baseball. You're right. There is a lot. One of the most famous is probably the 1919 World Series, which was a huge scandal. But I have a personal favourite. I think one of the things I like about researching sports

is the individual stories and these things that happen that you just want to turn into a film straight away. And this was in 1994. And it was a game between the Cleveland Indians and the Chicago White Sox, I think. And there was a thing at the time of corking your bat, which meant that you scraped the inside out of your baseball bat. You filled it with cork. And the idea was that's lighter, so you can hit the ball harder.

And it's very much banned, but people did it. So the Cleveland Indians, one of the players, Albert Bell, was accused of corking his bat. And the bat was confiscated and put in the stadium to be checked later. And the team knew that they were going to have their win taken away. They'd have a win taken away if it was found out to be corked. And they knew the bat was in fact corked. So one of their players, who wasn't actually on the pitch at the time,

a guy called jason brimsley went into the clubhouse while the game was going on like in a bond film he climbs into the ceiling vents crawls along it's boiling hot in there he's this massive guy like well over six foot huge shoulders i think he had a torch in his teeth he's carrying in one hand a replacement bat that he's going to swap for the illegal bat and he has to work out where to drop down to get this confiscated bat and he was in there for almost an hour i think you know trying to find a way at one point he removed one of the ceiling tiles and he looked down into a room and his eyes met the eyes of a janitor who was lying down on a

sofa at the time and just looked up to see a famous baseball player remove the ceiling tile and look down at him. And then he just replaced the tile, went on his merry way, and eventually found the room with the bat in it. He swapped the bats around and climbed out again and sadly was caught because he made the foolish mistake of swapping the bat for another player's and it had his name inscribed on it so it was immediately rumbled but i just love that extreme lengths like

you're saying who cares who cares that much that they're gonna put themselves in the ceiling vents of a building to swap a bat around that's bonkers and he touched on the 1919 white socks black socks scandal when it was said that they threw the world series the cincinnati reds and that's where we get the immortal phrase say it ain't so joe because joe the kids were asking joe jackson as he left the inquiry that he helped throw those games i love that i love that moment and then we got performance we haven't even talked about drugs well not since the ancient greeks i mean performance dancing steroids or i'm a half canadian and i used to go and watch loads of blue jays games and i remember that when i was younger so in the 1990s mark mcguire and barry bonds you know that

was the talk of the town back then and we talked about lance armstrong i mean that's now opened up another whole spectra whole you know dimension for cheating if you wish to do so yeah absolutely we looked at um the origins of like the steroids the Cold War, and we found this amazing person called John Ziegler, who is known as Montana Jack. And he basically had seen that the Soviets were doing so much better in weightlifting that he decided there must be something happening. So we invited one of the Soviet doctors to a bar, got him absolutely hammered with booze. And then this guy admitted that they'd been using testosterone. And so at that point, he probably could have gone to the authorities and said, look, maybe we should stop this because he could see that these weightlifters, even though they were

doing great weights, you know, they were having real medical problems. They were struggling to urinate, for instance, and growing hair where they shouldn't be growing hair. But what he decided instead was, well, anything the commies can do, the Americans can do better. So we're going to make our own testosterone and we're going to make it even better. And sure enough, we went through a period where the West and the East were basically battling over who could get the best steroids. And there was a famous quote by a weightlifting champion, Ken Pitera, who was in the East were basically battling over who could get the best steroids. And there was a famous quote by a weightlifting champion, Ken Patera, who was in the US. They asked him if he was looking forward to the Olympics. And he said, last year, the only difference between me and the Soviets was that I couldn't afford his pharmacy bill. Now I can. So we'll see which is better, his steroids or mine.

Wow. Yeah. So it was like, it was an an open secret it was very difficult to detect these things and so they were more bothered about banning the things that they could detect which was basically alcohol wasn't it yeah yeah i think it was the first thing to be banned yeah it was definitely the first person who was kicked out of the olympics was i think an archer who had had a couple of glasses of wine and they had got him over the limit. And actually Aaron and I spoke to an archer, didn't we, earlier this week for another podcast we're doing. And he said, obviously you'd never do it in competition, but if he's out with his mates

and he has a beer before his archery, it definitely improves it. It improves it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. It's the archery and shooting. As you can imagine, like in a bar when you're playing pool, when you're slightly more relaxed, then you can ease into it a bit more. Yeah, I find there's a bit of a sweet spot with that. You don't want to go over the top. It's quite hard to get the dosage correct.

Yes, yes. I think snowboarding came into the Winter Olympics in the 90s, and there was the first person who won gold. Canadian. He was Canadian, the guy who got done for marijuana at first. Yeah, legend. And I think he won gold, and he said, absolutely have not smoked any marijuana,

must have been passively inhaled at a party or something. Well, that's true. I'm like, well, it's true, and he kept his gold. Do you know what he does now? He runs a marijuana dispensary. Well, maybe that's okay. That doesn't mean he was guilty in the past. It doesn mean anything doesn't mean anything it did interest i agree it is interesting it is interesting i love british colombians man uh well let's finish by just pointing out we shouldn't worry about who

wins these stupid games and i'm really struck by your work on the game of of golf and you identify like like most things we think we invented in the West, that the Chinese were actually playing golf. It was like an imperial, very, very elite sport. Was it called chui wan? And it was very similar to modern golf. I don't know why humans have felt they should invent it twice. It seems to me it once would have been entirely adequate

for that blasted game. Anyway, and actually the key to playing with the emperor was that you absolutely shouldn't cheat and it absolutely should not matter who won. Now, I wonder if that's just because those are the records that come down to us and whether secretly they're all desperate to beat each other

because we're all flawed humans or whether sport and competition has got the better of us in this day and age. Yeah, it's really interesting because the etiquette was so important with Chiu Wan. And obviously, at least ostensibly, it's very, very important to golfers as well. I wonder if there's something inherent in golf

which makes people think that the etiquette is so important. Yeah. Because this Chinese game was like, it was so similar. You know, there are paintings from about 1500 AD where you have women who are holding clubs that you would definitely say look exactly like golf clubs. They have caddies in the background who are carrying their clubs with them. They're hitting the ball towards a little hole, which has got a flag in it. It couldn't look more like golf, apart from I think the main difference was the holes were much shorter. They could be as short as a crazy golf hole

or the longest they would ever get would be like a short, very, very short modern golf hole. And it's all kind of underpinned by Confucianism, wasn't it? Yeah. That kind of line of thinking, which you are meant to rise above the confessiveness. But I really think to your point, Dan, that it's impossible when you're playing a game

not to want to at least do it well, if not to win. I actually had a weird experience yesterday because I live right next to a primary school and I talked to the parents of that primary school. And I know it's one of those on their sports day. No, there are no winners. You know, some schools are that thing where everyone competes, but no one is announced as the winner. And yet I was in a pub garden yesterday and I ended up chatting to a bunch of kids who go to that primary school and we ended up talking about sports day and they all told me all the races that they won and I was like right so officially there are no winners in that sports day but every kid is taking a note of which they win I don't think we can avoid it

exactly and we can all go away and look at our chart position for our podcast. Right. Okay. Thank you very much for coming on this podcast and boosting our chart position, no doubt, with your brilliance. Tell me what it's called, the book. Oh, yeah.

It's called A Load of Old Balls. Very highbrow title. And it's out now. A Load of Old Balls. Go and get it, everybody. QI History of Sport. Thank you very much you