The 30 Greatest Sports Conspiracy Theories of All-Time - Elliott Kalb [103]
MY OPINION
This was a game that the United States was not allowed to win. They couldn’t put away the Soviets by a substantial margin early in the game, and would be later criticized at home for not running the Soviets off the court. Iba played a slow-down game, and that played into the Soviets’ hands. Some questioned why the 7’4” Burleson wasn’t in the game for the final seconds.
I wish coach Iba could have taken his team off the court and not come out for the second and third passes by the Soviets. The coaching staff could have sized up the situation, decided that the game was over, and let the chips fall where they may.
Barring that, I wish that a compromise had been formed in the appeals process, perhaps even allowing the two teams to play the entire game over. That, to me, would have been the only fair way to settle things.
OTHER OLYMPIC SHENANIGANS
1908 Men’s 400-meter Final in London
This was one of the most controversial events in Olympic history, and nearly led to a walkout by the entire American squad. Four athletes, including three Americans (John Taylor, W.C. Robbins, and J.C. Carpenter) qualified for the final in the 400 meter. The favorite was London-born Wyndham Halswelle, who had set an Olympic record in the semi-final. There were not assigned lanes or a staggered start.
Guess what happened? Coming into the home stretch, Halswelle attempted to make his move on the outside, but Carpenter ran wide and kept the hometown hero from taking the lead. British officials immediately called foul. Before the race was even finished, they broke the tape and pulled Taylor off the track before he could come in first. The Americans exploded, as you can imagine. Olympic officials studied the footprints of the runners and ruled that American Carpenter had deliberately cut off Halswelle. The American was disqualified, and the race was scheduled to be re-run two days later, this time with strings laid out to divide lanes. Robbins and Taylor pulled out in protest, leaving Halswelle running around the track in a no-contest, to become the only track and field athlete ever to win a gold medal unchallenged.
The 1972 U.S. basketball team should have taken a page from the 1908 U.S. track team and not gone back onto the court to replay the game’s final seconds. By the way, that 1908 men’s 400-meter had ramifications: the judging and supervision of events was taken away from the host country and given to the international federations. But the question remains, was it gamesmanship by the Americans, or a conspiracy by the British officials?
1992 Unified Weightlifting Team
Then there’s the story of the short-lived “Unified Team.” The IOC couldn’t have the USSR compete in the Olympics after the 1988 Games, what with the Soviet Union having broken up into fifteen independent nations. Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania all competed independently in Barcelona in 1992, but the other twelve ex-Soviet republics entered as a combined squad, known as the “Unified Team.” The head coach of the Unified Weightlifting Team, Russian Vassily Alekseyev, passed up overwhelming favorite Altymurat Orazdurdiyev of Turkmenistan in the light-heavyweight division. Ibragim Samadov, a Russian, was also on the Unified Team. Fifteen minutes before the official weigh-in, Alekseyev informed Orazdurdiyev that he would not be allowed to compete because he would “get in the way” of Samadov. Orazdurdiyev pleaded with his coach and even offered to lose to Samadov and settle for a silver medal, but Alekseyev,