Corruption culture continues in 2007

As 2007 draws to a close, one of the major issues in sport was corruption. Tennis, formula one and horse racing have been under the spotlight during the year.
 

Horse racing’s already tarnished image has been blackened even further in the past 12 months.
Kieran Fallon, the champion flat jockey was at the heart of the race-scandal that robbed punters of millions of pounds. It was alleged that Fallon, 41, fixed 27 races along with two other jockeys. But the court case has since been dropped.

His career has always been controversial but this latest incident has really raised questions about undoubtedly one of the best jockey’s in the world.

In November the race fixing trial heard evidence that a Newcastle United and England striker made regular contacts with Fallon to enquire about betting tips. The trial is still ongoing so we’ll have to wait to discover the fate of six-time champion jockey.

Tennis was surprisingly one of the main sports that suffered controversy. During an interview in October, Andy Murray controversially claimed that there was a lot of betting in tennis and that some of the players had been offered money for fixing matches. He told the BBC, “Everyone knows that betting and match-fixing goes on and that there is corruption in sport.”

Tennis Hall of Famer, Pam Shriver echoed Murray’s allegations. She said, “Betting is a really dangerous influence. When a lot of money is involved, people will do the wrong things.”

The ATP is currently investigating Nikolay Davydenko’s match against Martin Vassallo Arguello after several large bets were made on the Betfair website. Davydenko withdrew in the third set after suffering a foot injury.  He was also fined £2000 after facing Marcos Baghdatis at the St. Petersburg open but the fine was rescinded after an appeal. He was in fact warned by an umpire to try harder after hitting a significant amount of double faults.

In November, Italy’s Alessio di Mauro was banned for nine months and fined £30,000 for betting on matches. The investigation is ongoing and so far he is the only player to be sanctioned.

Corruption in tennis would have been unheard in the past, so it’ll be interesting to see whether we hear any more of this in 2008, but, for the good of the game, let’s hope not.

After the most exciting season that Formula One had seen in many years, the campaign was somewhat overshadowed following the scandal of McLaren extracting secrets from Ferrari.

McLaren were fined a record $100 million for possessing illegal Ferrari documents and were disqualified from the constructor’s championship. Now there is a new alleged scandal of Renault spying on McLaren and there will surely be more heard it about it in the near future.

There is also a big problem in America. Tim Donaghy, a top NBA official, is under investigation by the FBI after accusations that, during the past two seasons, he made a number of bets on games where he was the referee. Authorities are currently examing some of the games that he may have influenced. There are also allegations that the referee had connections with organised crime associates.

The story of transfer corruption in English football had been the dominant story in 2006. After the BBC Panorama, Lord Stevens launched an inquiry into corruption in the beautiful game. But the final report stated there wasn’t any hard evidence of irregular payments been made to club officials or players and we didn’t hear much about it in the past year.

The influence of rising technology has affected most cases, particularly those concerning Horse Racing due to the easily accessible betting websites. The Fallon trial may not even have gone to trial 15 years ago but the growth in gambling and technology has meant that punters are losing millions.

- Scott Lawless