France led the way in 1998 with a World Cup coup in a year of triumph and vice
Posted: Thursday December 31, 1998 04:51 PM
NEW YORK, New York (AP) -- Doping and bribery. Scandal, accusations and labor disputes. The image of sports in 1998.
Even the biggest event -- the World Cup -- was not immune from controversy.
From the red card scare before the World Cup to Ronaldo's mysterious illness before the final, soccer had to deal all sorts of non-game distractions like nearly every other sport.
To cycling's Tour de France goes the doping scandal of the year. Cricket saw bribery allegations against Pakistan's Salim Malik continue -- and then had charges leveled against two of his accusers, Australia's Shane Warne and Mark Waugh, about taking controversial payments from an Indian bookmaker.
Baseball had its brouhaha in the United States over American home run record breaker Mark McGwire taking a controversial yet allowed dietary supplement, and in Japan about the Fukuoka Daiei Hawks and its manager, legendary home run king Sadaharu Oh, stealing signs.
The National Basketball Association locked out its players after the season in June and hasn't played a game since.
English soccer was rocked with a bribery scandal as the year ended, but the biggest mess of all seemed to be when 80-year-old Swiss lawyer and International Olympic Committee member Marc Hodler claimed vote-buying was common in the selection of host cities.
Hodler claimed four "agents" -- one an IOC member, had been involved in schemes to buy votes in the election of host cities. His claims came after a Salt Lake City television station reported the American organizers of the 2002 Winter Games had given US$400,000 worth scholarships, some to relatives of IOC members.
The Swiss was the first person within the IOC to support claims of corruption against the Olympic movement. Hodler said he came forth because he didn't want to see Salt Lake get blamed instead of those on the inside of the IOC.
But everybody seemed to have their own scandal and it was hard to find a sport which wasn't tainted in 1998.
One cycling team was kicked out and six others withdrew from the Tour de France, which became the doping scandal of the year Alex Livesey/Allsport | |
The English Football Association was responsible for soccer's biggest scandal of the year when chief executive Graham Kelly resigned over his and chairman Keith Wiseman's decision to loan the Welsh FA 3.2 million pounds (US$5 million).
Kelly and Wiseman acted unilaterally, but denied accusations it was to get the Welsh FA's support for Wiseman for executive committee posts at UEFA and FIFA and England's bid for the World Cup of 2006.
But even before that, soccer had other problems. The bitter election campaign between Sepp Blatter and Lennart Johansson to replace Joao Havelange as president didn't even end after Blatter won.
Johansson accused his opponent of vote-buying the day after the election, getting the new president's term off to an inauspicious start.
The World Cup, which many feared would look like a May Day parade in Red Square with FIFA's directive to referees to punish any tackle from behind with an ejection, started out like any of the other quadrennial championships.
But midway through the tournament, after Blatter publicly said referees should be less tolerant of fouling, a flurry of reds emerged, including three in the South Africa-Denmark game.
The French were largely ambivalent to their team until it reached and eventually won the final, celebrating non-stop for more than 24 hours. But the reason for their joy was set off by the great World Cup mystery -- Ronaldo.
The two-time FIFA Player of the Year was supposed to be center stage for Brazil's unprecedented fifth title, but instead wasn't even listed on the lineup -- even as a reserve -- distributed to the media more than hour before kickoff.
Fifteen minutes later a new lineup was issued, this time with the shaven-headed 21-year-old as Brazil's starting forward. He should have stayed in the lockerroom. He played listlessly and the rest of the Brazilians looked confused and rudderless, resulting in France's 3-0 victory and a first ever triumph. *
It was later revealed by coach Mario Zagallo that during the afternoon Ronaldo had vomited and was taken to the hospital. When asked why Ronaldo still played, Zagallo went into a rage and theories grew like germs, including one that team sponsor Nike -- which also uses Ronaldo as a spokesman -- ordered Zagallo to play him.
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Malik has been under suspicion for three years after he was accused of trying to bribe some players during a 1994 tour of Pakistan Shaun Botterill/Allsport |
Zdenek Zemen, the coach of Italian soccer club AS Roma, sparked a doping scandal by suggesting some star players were taking performance enhancing drugs. Several high-ranking officials are under investigation for allegedly concealing the results of positive tests.
But in a scandal plagued year, soccer was one of the lesser offenders.
Besides the Olympics, cycling took the biggest beating thanks to the doping madness than engulfed the Tour de France.
While suspicions have been rampant about the sport for years, 1998 confirmed what many already believed. Three days before the start of the race, the Festina team masseur was caught with massive quantities of performance-enhancing drugs, including the undetectable blood agent EPO.
Before it was over, police had raided cyclists rooms, the competitors staged a strike and seven teams were driven from the race.
Besides Hodler's accusations, the Olympics in Nagano, Japan, had its own doping controversy when Canadian snowboarder Ross Rebagliati won the giant slalom gold, but then had it taken away because he tested positive for marijuana.
He claimed he tested positive because of second-hand smoke and an appeals panel restored his medal.
Of course the whole year started out with a doping scandal when Chinese swimmer Yuan Yuan was caught entering Australia for the World Championships with more than a little Human Growth Hormone (HGH).
After dominating the 1994 championships in Rome with 16 golds and 28 medals overall, the Chinese were expected to be a big presence. But after Yuan was caught, she and her coach were sent home in disgrace and the Chinese returned to Beijing with only six golds and more accusations about systematic doping.
Cricket's woes revolved largely around three players, Malik, Warne and Waugh.
After the match against France there was much dispute as to why Zagallo played Ronaldo Ben Radford/Allsport | |
Malik has been under suspicion for three years after Warne, Waugh and Australian teammate Tim May accused him of trying to bribe them during a 1994 tour of Pakistan.
The latest inquiry into the matter saw Waugh testify in Pakistan in October, but the matter took a peculiar twist when in December it was revealed that Warne and Waugh accepted money from an Indian bookmaker during a 1994 tour of Sri Lanka.
The money supposedly was for pitch and weather information, but the oddest revelation was that the Australian board not only was aware, but fined the pair and never disclosed the matter.
Baseball had its problems as Dominican Sammy Sosa and McGwire battled almost until the final day to break Roger Maris' single-season U.S. Major League Baseball home run record of 61.
McGwire eventually prevailed with 70, but discovery that he was taking the muscle-building supplement androstenedione for more than a year led some to say the mark was tainted. The substance, which has been associated with some of the same negative side effects as steroids, is banned by the IOC and some other sports organizations but is not prohibited by MLB.
Japanese baseball's scandal seemed less nefarious, at least to Americans, who consider sign-stealing almost like a badge of honor.
A 10-day internal investigation by the Hawks said it found no evidence club personnel were sitting in the stands with binoculars, intercepting the catcher's signs and relaying them by wireless radio to another person who would signal the batter as to what pitch to expect.
For fans of the NBA, after the Chicago Bulls won their sixth title in eight years in June the only thing for them to read about was the "lockout". Club owners essentially have gone on strike until a new collective bargaining agreement with the players union is reached. The biggest problem was how to divide about US$2 billion in revenue and with neither side budging, the NBA hasn't played a game this season and doesn't appear likely to anytime soon.
Otherwise, teams did win, lose and draw. Egypt won its fourth African Cup, South Africa won the Tri-Nations rugby title and went on to a record-equalling 18 straight test victories, and Finland's Mika Hakkinen brought McLaren the Formula One title for the first time since 1991 when the late Ayrton Senna was driving for the team.
The Olympics produced their own heroes. Norway's Bjorn Daehlie became the Winter Games'all-time gold medal winner; Japanese Masahiko Harada and Kazuyoshi Funaki exorcised a 4-year-old demon when they combined with Takanobu Okabe and Hiroya Saito to win the team ski jumping; and goalie Dominik Hasek carried the Czech Republic on his hot glove to the ice hockey crown.
But the year started with scandal to cast a morning shadow on sports, and as the sun set on 1998, several more left little light to shine on its champions.
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