The bigwigs who run America's Major League Baseball are gearing up for what has become a sadly familiar rite. They will huff and puff self-righteously about ridding the game of the steroid scourge once and for all (not a chance). This time, executives say, they're not fooling around. Some of the biggest names in the game, including the New York Yankees' Alex Rodriguez, are facing lengthy game suspensions - never mind that baseball helped create the very problem it's now so desperate to eradicate.
Sadly, this is not just baseball's predicament. The steroid issue has dogged sport around the globe. Track and field has seen some of its brightest stars - Marion Jones, Ben Johnson and, just last week, Tyson Gay and Asafa Powell - disgraced by doping charges. Cycling is still reeling from the downfall of Lance Armstrong and Floyd Landis, whose reputations lie in ruins.
The doping menace is just the most egregious form of cheating covered by Mike Rowbottom in his new book, Foul Play: The Dark Arts of Cheating in Sport. The author, who has written about sport for The Times and The Guardian and is chief features writer for insidethegames.biz, is anything if not comprehensive. He looks at all manner of rule bending, from the subtly cynical to the totally outrageous. From doping to illegal betting to match fixing to ungentlemanly - and womanly - acts, it's all in here. "Misdeeds and shady behaviour exist - and have long existed - in almost every form of contest you care to name," Rowbottom writes. "In the so-called big sports - football, rugby, cricket. And in the so-called minor sports - bowls, real tennis, squash, croquet, conkers." Yes, even conkers.
The fans, when confronted with fraudulent activity, cry "Say it ain't so": Rowbottom counsels, "It was ever thus." Consider the athletes of ancient Greece. Far from the paragons of Olympic ideals, they bent the rules to gain competitive advantage. "Sheep's testicles - heavy on the testosterone - [were] the supplement of choice for those wishing to improve their strength," Rowbottom notes. Others looking for a leg up on the competition took a formula, here described by the physician Galen, composed of "the rear hooves of an Abyssinian ass, ground up, boiled in oil and flavoured with rosehips and petals". In the Olympics of 420 BC, a banned chariot racer from Sparta passed off his winning rig under the banner of another state. And so on.
Rowbottom's catalogue of transgressions from more recent times boggles the mind. Doping may be the worst scourge, but it's only one way of bending the rules. Rowbottom recounts the travails of Ben Johnson and others; such sections will seem familiar to anyone who reads the sports pages. But it is money, Rowbottom suggests, that might have a more pernicious and corrosive effect on sport than performance-enhancing drugs.
"Spot-betting", for example, where you can take odds on specific aspects of a competition - the number of free kicks given in a football match, say, or whether a no-ball will be delivered in cricket - has grown into a multibillion-dollar business, a lot of it in illegal bookmaking operations run out of East Asia. This kind of betting has become pervasive, with punters throwing money at an ever more minute array of actions. The temptation for players is considerable. Former Southampton great Matthew Le Tissier admitted that he put money on the timing of the first throw-in in a 1995 fixture against Wimbledon, and altered his play, trying to kick the ball out of bounds soon after kick-off.
Rowbottom contends that such seemingly innocuous behaviour - it was just one throw-in, one might argue, hardly a game changer - is actually corrosive. "What gives the manipulation of spot-betting a profound and insidious power is the fact that in the minds of sporting protagonists considering such manipulation, it can be separated from the suggestion that they are doing something seriously wrong." Cricket has been particularly susceptible to spot-betting problems. The Indian Premier League has been roiled by allegations of illegal betting, and three Pakistani players were suspended and given prison sentences for spot-fixing of no-balls during the Pakistan-England Test Match in 2011.
The money issue worries Rowbottom, but he maintains a levity throughout the book; indeed, one can almost see him writing with a twinkle in his eye, so ridiculous are some of the examples he cites. Among the most hilarious are from the smash-mouth sport of rugby. Take the "bloodgate" scandal from the 2009 Heineken Cup match between Harlequins and Irish side Leinster. A Harlequins winger chewed fake blood capsules to fake an injury, and thus manipulate the substitution system and bring back on another player. An investigation revealed that Harlequins had used fake blood on other occasions.
As Rowbottom admits, the art of getting away with it has always been a part of sport. But not all cheating is the result of conspiratorial conniving a la bloodgate. Much of it is situational and spontaneous.
Perhaps the most celebrated (and still controversial) instance of the latter is Diego Maradona's "Hand of God" goal in the 1986 World Cup quarterfinal match between Argentina and England. Though he clearly laid a hand on the ball before it went in, the crucial goal was allowed (Argentina won 2-1). Afterwards, Maradona waggishly said the goal was scored "un poco con la cabeza de Maradona, y otro poco con la mano de Dios (a little on the head of Maradona, and a little with the hand of God)." More recently, a handball by Thierry Henry set up a game winning score when France faced off against Ireland in a 2010 play-off for a World Cup spot. Despite howls of protest from the Irish side, "the Hand of Gaul" goal was allowed.
What makes Foul Play a worthy contribution to the debate over cheating in athletic competitions is the way Rowbottom parses distinctions between different kinds of rule-bending. Not all of it is necessarily bad or immoral. Mind games are part of the deal in just about any game - psychological manipulation, wearing an opponent down with taunts or teases, is a skill just like passing a football or wielding a cricket bat. There was a beauty to the way boxer Muhammad Ali could get under the skin of his opponents. A distasteful tactic at times, maybe - whatever Marco Materazzi said to Zinedine Zidane in the 2006 World Cup final was surely disgusting, caused the Frenchman to lose his head, and arguably cost France the game altogether, but the Italian player's foul utterance was hardly equivalent to throwing a match.
More importantly, Rowbottom does not let the fans off the hook. Indeed, we spectators, he argues - fairly, I think - are a large part of the problem of cheating in any sport. "There is pressure on top sportsmen and women to win," he writes, "particularly when they represent their country. Here is a factor which, at times, towers over the lure of money in the mind of sporting protagonists. Sport becomes a visceral, tribal affair. Or it becomes a political thing - equally potent. But the generating force is us, the sporting followers, willing and even demanding our representative to win on our behalf, or else demanding that performances reach ever-increasing levels." Athletes, "no matter how many drugs they put into our system, gain nothing unless their performance is valued. Only that monetises it. And the valuation comes from us, the sporting followers".
It is easy to point the finger at the likes of Lance Armstrong and Barry Bonds, the tainted all-time leader in home runs whose grotesque body bulged with steroid-enhanced muscles as he bore down on record after record in the first decade of the 21st century. But they are merely convenient villains. Look in the mirror, Rowbottom suggests: that is where you will find the real enemy.
Matthew Price's writing has been published in Bookforum, the Los Angeles Times, The Boston Globeand the Financial Times.
If you go
Where to stay: Courtyard by Marriott Titusville Kennedy Space Centre has unparalleled views of the Indian River. Alligators can be spotted from hotel room balconies, as can several rocket launch sites. The hotel also boasts cool space-themed decor.
When to go: Florida is best experienced during the winter months, from November to May, before the humidity kicks in.
How to get there: Emirates currently flies from Dubai to Orlando five times a week.
Other workplace saving schemes
- The UAE government announced a retirement savings plan for private and free zone sector employees in 2023.
- Dubai’s savings retirement scheme for foreign employees working in the emirate’s government and public sector came into effect in 2022.
- National Bonds unveiled a Golden Pension Scheme in 2022 to help private-sector foreign employees with their financial planning.
- In April 2021, Hayah Insurance unveiled a workplace savings plan to help UAE employees save for their retirement.
- Lunate, an Abu Dhabi-based investment manager, has launched a fund that will allow UAE private companies to offer employees investment returns on end-of-service benefits.
Predictions
Predicted winners for final round of games before play-offs:
- Friday: Delhi v Chennai - Chennai
- Saturday: Rajasthan v Bangalore - Bangalore
- Saturday: Hyderabad v Kolkata - Hyderabad
- Sunday: Delhi v Mumbai - Mumbai
- Sunday - Chennai v Punjab - Chennai
Final top-four (who will make play-offs): Chennai, Hyderabad, Mumbai and Bangalore
Persuasion
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Haemoglobin disorders explained
Thalassaemia is part of a family of genetic conditions affecting the blood known as haemoglobin disorders.
Haemoglobin is a substance in the red blood cells that carries oxygen and a lack of it triggers anemia, leaving patients very weak, short of breath and pale.
The most severe type of the condition is typically inherited when both parents are carriers. Those patients often require regular blood transfusions - about 450 of the UAE's 2,000 thalassaemia patients - though frequent transfusions can lead to too much iron in the body and heart and liver problems.
The condition mainly affects people of Mediterranean, South Asian, South-East Asian and Middle Eastern origin. Saudi Arabia recorded 45,892 cases of carriers between 2004 and 2014.
A World Health Organisation study estimated that globally there are at least 950,000 'new carrier couples' every year and annually there are 1.33 million at-risk pregnancies.
COMPANY%20PROFILE
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Formula Middle East Calendar (Formula Regional and Formula 4)
Round 1: January 17-19, Yas Marina Circuit – Abu Dhabi
Round 2: January 22-23, Yas Marina Circuit – Abu Dhabi
Round 3: February 7-9, Dubai Autodrome – Dubai
Round 4: February 14-16, Yas Marina Circuit – Abu Dhabi
Round 5: February 25-27, Jeddah Corniche Circuit – Saudi Arabia
BUNDESLIGA FIXTURES
Friday (UAE kick-off times)
Cologne v Hoffenheim (11.30pm)
Saturday
Hertha Berlin v RB Leipzig (6.30pm)
Schalke v Fortuna Dusseldof (6.30pm)
Mainz v Union Berlin (6.30pm)
Paderborn v Augsburg (6.30pm)
Bayern Munich v Borussia Dortmund (9.30pm)
Sunday
Borussia Monchengladbach v Werder Bremen (4.30pm)
Wolfsburg v Bayer Leverkusen (6.30pm)
SC Freiburg v Eintracht Frankfurt (9on)
BULKWHIZ PROFILE
Date started: February 2017
Founders: Amira Rashad (CEO), Yusuf Saber (CTO), Mahmoud Sayedahmed (adviser), Reda Bouraoui (adviser)
Based: Dubai, UAE
Sector: E-commerce
Size: 50 employees
Funding: approximately $6m
Investors: Beco Capital, Enabling Future and Wain in the UAE; China's MSA Capital; 500 Startups; Faith Capital and Savour Ventures in Kuwait
How to avoid crypto fraud
- Use unique usernames and passwords while enabling multi-factor authentication.
- Use an offline private key, a physical device that requires manual activation, whenever you access your wallet.
- Avoid suspicious social media ads promoting fraudulent schemes.
- Only invest in crypto projects that you fully understand.
- Critically assess whether a project’s promises or returns seem too good to be true.
- Only use reputable platforms that have a track record of strong regulatory compliance.
- Store funds in hardware wallets as opposed to online exchanges.
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The Sand Castle
Director: Matty Brown
Stars: Nadine Labaki, Ziad Bakri, Zain Al Rafeea, Riman Al Rafeea
Rating: 2.5/5
COMPANY PROFILE
Name: Almnssa
Started: August 2020
Founder: Areej Selmi
Based: Gaza
Sectors: Internet, e-commerce
Investments: Grants/private funding
COMPANY%20PROFILE%20
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COMPANY PROFILE
Name: HyperSpace
Started: 2020
Founders: Alexander Heller, Rama Allen and Desi Gonzalez
Based: Dubai, UAE
Sector: Entertainment
Number of staff: 210
Investment raised: $75 million from investors including Galaxy Interactive, Riyadh Season, Sega Ventures and Apis Venture Partners
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UAE currency: the story behind the money in your pockets
Fixtures
Sunday, December 8, Sharjah Cricket Stadium – UAE v USA
Monday, December 9, Sharjah Cricket Stadium – USA v Scotland
Wednesday, December 11, Sharjah Cricket Stadium – UAE v Scotland
Thursday, December 12, ICC Academy, Dubai – UAE v USA
Saturday, December 14, ICC Academy, Dubai – USA v Scotland
Sunday, December 15, ICC Academy, Dubai – UAE v Scotland
Note: All matches start at 10am, admission is free
Key facilities
- Olympic-size swimming pool with a split bulkhead for multi-use configurations, including water polo and 50m/25m training lanes
- Premier League-standard football pitch
- 400m Olympic running track
- NBA-spec basketball court with auditorium
- 600-seat auditorium
- Spaces for historical and cultural exploration
- An elevated football field that doubles as a helipad
- Specialist robotics and science laboratories
- AR and VR-enabled learning centres
- Disruption Lab and Research Centre for developing entrepreneurial skills
COMPANY%20PROFILE
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Dubai Bling season three
Cast: Loujain Adada, Zeina Khoury, Farhana Bodi, Ebraheem Al Samadi, Mona Kattan, and couples Safa & Fahad Siddiqui and DJ Bliss & Danya Mohammed
Rating: 1/5
Game Changer
Director: Shankar
Stars: Ram Charan, Kiara Advani, Anjali, S J Suryah, Jayaram
Rating: 2/5
LIVING IN...
This article is part of a guide on where to live in the UAE. Our reporters will profile some of the country’s most desirable districts, provide an estimate of rental prices and introduce you to some of the residents who call each area home.