By DB Peters Mar 24, 2007, 9:01 GMT
Hamburg - Sporting scandals are probably nearly as old as sport itself, but seldom do they lead to murder - as seemed to have been the case with Pakistan cricket coach Bob Woolmer.
The 58-year-old former England test cricketer was found dead at the beginning of the week in his hotel room in Kingston, Jamaica shortly after his side had sensationally lost to Ireland and been knocked out of the cricket World Cup.
Authorities at first refused to make any pronouncement on the cause of his death, but later conceded that Woolmer had died of 'manual strangulation' and said they were treating the investigation into his death as a murder inquiry.
Woolmer's family on Friday said they had no knowledge of any possible connection to match-fixing. Media have speculated that Woolmer's death may be linked to gambling cartels, and that the coach may have been writing a book exposing illegal gambling in the sport of cricket.
The first big sporting scandal of modern history occurred in 1919, when the Cincinnati Reds defeated the Chicago White Sox in baseball's World Series in the United States.
A short while later it was discovered that several Chicago players had worked with gamblers to deliberately lose the game and eight of the team's players were subsequently banned for life.
Baseball, of course, is not the only sport to have had its betting scandals. Match-fixing in the German football Bundesliga involving referee Robert Hoyzer and the Italian Serie A, which led to Juventus being demoted to Serie B and several clubs including AC Milan losing points, are still fresh in the minds of sports fans.
Even the greatest of sporting institutions, the Olympic Games, has not been without its share of controversies. Allegations of vote- buying in the process of determining the host cities have long been rife and the Salt Lake City scandal of 2002 remains the most blatant.
The Winter Games bid committee spent millions of dollars wining, dining and wooing International Olympic Committee members, several of whom lost their position once the scandal became public.
The Games themselves were later to provide another huge scandal when a French judge in the pairs figure skating competition admitted that she had voted for a Russian pair after being put under pressure by her federation president.
The controversy became so big that in the end the IOC decided to award a second gold medal to Canadian skaters Jamie Sale and David Pelletier, whom most had seen as the winners in the actual competition.
The list of sporting scandals could go on endlessly: The Soviet Union winning the 1972 Olympic basketball gold medal, more doping scandals than anybody can remember and the betting scandal involving cricket - the so-called Hansiegate.
But while all of these scandals seriously dented the image of sport and athletes, they had one thing in common: they steered clear of violence.
That, however, has also not always been the case.
Four years ago Baylor basketball player Patrick Dennehy was killed by teammate Carlton Dotson.
The case opened a can of worms as it emerged that head coach Dave Bliss told his players to lie and say that Dennehy had been selling drugs. Bliss was also found to have been paying tuition fees for players in contravention of rules and had failed to report failed drug tests.
Dotson pleaded guilty to murder and as a result the real reasons for the killing never came out.
A few years earlier, in 1994, American figure skating champion Nancy Kerrigan was attacked during a practise session for the US championships. It was later discovered that she had been clubbed on the knee by Shane Stant, who had been hired to do so by the ex husband of Kerrigan's main rival, Tonya Harding.
When this became known, Kerrigan was entered for the Olympics and Harding excluded, but after threatening legal action, Harding was allowed to compete for the US and came in eighth, while Kerrigan won the silver medal.
In the same year South African football administrator Rama Reddy was found strangled in his car. He had been the president of a regional football association and had refused to sign the association's financial records as he suspected some irregularities.
Although a witness later came forward and said the murder had been committed by the treasurer of the association, the case never went to court and Reddy's murder remains officially unsolved.
His death was not the first football-related death in South Africa.
A few years earlier, a rival body had been established to the main professional football league and many clubs had split into two with one faction remaining with the National Professional Soccer League, while others went with the newly formed National Soccer League.
In the weeks that followed the split, several players including Aaron 'Roadblock' Makhathini, who was the captain of one of the best clubs, Moroka Swallows, were killed for refusing to throw their lot in with the NSL.
Another footballer who was shot and killed was Colombian defender Andres Escobar, who was killed - execution style - a few days after scoring an own goal for the US in a World Cup match. The South Americans went on to lose 2-1 and were eliminated from the World Cup.
Although it was never clearly established whether Escobar's murderer had acted on orders of a betting syndicate, there is widespread belief that he did so.
The same rumours are now doing the rounds concerning Bob Woolmer's death and millions of sports fans worldwide are hoping that his killer (or killers) are brought to justice so that the case can be cleared up.
But even if it is, is is more than unlikely that it will be the last sporting scandal to make it into the headlines.
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