Good Morning POU! This week we take a look at sordid scandals from the sports world.
Now this is just beyond lowdown. Ten of the twelve members of the gold medal-winning Spanish basketball team at the 2000 Summer Paralympics were revealed to have no disability.
The 2000 Summer Paralympics in Sydney, which had already seen controversy with numerous positive drug tests, would be the venue for one of the most scandalous events in the sport’s history. Spain was stripped of their intellectual disability basketball gold medals shortly after the Games closed after Carlos Ribagorda, a member of the victorious team and an undercover journalist, revealed to the Spanish business magazine Capital that most of his colleagues had not undergone medical tests to ensure that they had a disability. The IPC investigated the claims and found that the required mental tests, which should show that the competitors have an IQ of no more than 75, were not conducted by the Spanish Paralympic Committee (CPE). Ribagorda alleged that some Spanish participants in the table tennis, track and field, and swimming events were also not disabled, meaning that five medals had been won fraudulently. Ribargorda went on to admit that he had played for the Spanish Paralympic basketball team for over two years but had no mental handicap.
He went on to say that the Spanish Federation of Sportspeople with the Intellectually Disabilities (FEDDI) deliberately chose to sign up athletes who were not intellectually disabled to “win medals and gain more sponsorship”. Fernando Martin Vicente, president of the FEDDI and vice-president of CPE, initially denied the allegations. After it was confirmed that 10 of the 12 competitors in the winning team were not disabled, Martin Vicente publicly apologised for the error and accepted total responsibility, resigning just before the findings were officially released.
Two weeks later the team was officially disqualified and was ordered to return the gold medals.