The Malaysian Insider :: Sports
The Malaysian Insider :: Sports |
| Former Spain sports boss fined over Paralympics scandal Posted: 08 Oct 2013 03:57 AM PDT A Spanish court slapped a former sports boss with a fine of €5,400 (RM23,400) for fielding athletes with no disabilities at the 2000 Paralympics in Sydney in order to win medals. The Madrid court found the former head of the Spanish Federation for Mentally Handicapped Sports, Fernando Martin Vicente, guilty of fraud and ordered that he pay the fine and return €142,355 in government subsidies which the federation received for the athletes without disabilities. The scandal broke in November 2000 when Carlos Ribagorda, a member of Spain's gold medal-winning intellectually handicapped basketball team in Sydney, claimed that he and other athletes in categories such as track and field, table tennis and swimming were not mentally deficient. "Of the 200 Spanish athletes at Sydney at least 15 had no type of physical or mental handicap - they didn't even pass medical or psychological examinations," he wrote in the magazine Capital just days after the Paralympics ended. Ribargorda said he had played for the Spanish Paralympic basketball team for over two years but had no mental handicap. He said the only test he had been asked to complete at his first training session was six press-ups, after which his blood pressure was taken. Spain had their most successful Paralympics in Sydney, winning 107 medals to finish third in the medals table after Australia and Britain. Martin Vicente resigned as the head of the Spanish Federation for Mentally Handicapped Sports, which was responsible for screening some participants in the Paralympics in Sydney shortly after the Capital article was published, saying he accepted "total responsibility". He had argued that psychological evaluations of mentally deficient athletes as difficult and that mistakes had been made. "If someone wants to cheat, it's difficult to detect. It's easy to pretend you have little intelligence but the opposite is difficult," he said when he announced his resignation. Eighteen other people, including members of the basketball team that went to Sydney and managers of the Spanish Federation for Mentally Handicapped Sports, were also charged over the affair but the court on Monday dropped the charges. - AFP, October 8, 2013. |
| Milan to play behind closed doors over abusive chants Posted: 08 Oct 2013 03:20 AM PDT During Sunday's match against Juventus in Turin, hundreds of Milan supporters shouted "We are not Neapolitans", a chant the Naples daily Il Mattino said reflected long-standing contempt for the south by northern clubs. In the fiercely territorial world of Italian football, abusive rivalry between supporters of clubs in the rich north and those in the poorer south is not uncommon and Milan officials reacted with shock to the verdict by Serie A sporting judges. "To say I'm furious would be putting it mildly," Milan chief executive Adriano Galliani told reporters. "I understand that racism is a big problem, a problem everywhere in the world but territorial discrimination is another thing entirely." The sentence means that Milan, in 12th place in the Serie A standings after a 3-2 loss to Juventus on Sunday, will play its next home game on October 19 against Udinese behind closed doors. The Serie A sporting judges also banned Milan defender Philippe Mexes for four matches for violent conduct after video evidence showed him punching Juventus player Giorgio Chiellini as Juventus was taking a corner. The punch was not seen by the referee but Mexes was sent off for a second yellow card. - Reuters, October 8, 2013. |
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