Last week I saw a play by the Reduced Shakespeare Company called “The Complete World of Sports (Abridged)”. It was my third time seeing the group live and I highly encourage anyone not familiar with them to check out their work, as they’re very funny, intellectual, and spontaneous.
The climactic scene of said play involved the members of the troupe competing in an Olympic tridekatholon (32 sports at once), performed in slow motion. By the time the penultimate sport, swimming, came around, two of the three were left - one who swam the length of the obstacle with ease, while the other floundered and barely made it across alive. The final event was a dash to the finish line. The leading athlete makes it nearly to the tape at the finish line when he sees his rival climbing out of the water and starting to run - at which point, about to break the tape, he stops and gestures for his competitor to go ahead of him and win the race.
After seeing the show and ruminating about it for awhile, it occured to me that i’ve seen this particular trope in use in other works before - “Competitor with an obvious lead stops and lets person behind him win out of sympathy or camaraderie”.
Has something like that ever actually happened in any sort of professional sporting event? Olympics, baseball, football, cricket, what have you? I’m fairly certain that it would be against the rules of any reputable sporting body, mind you - I can see plenty of ways it could be construed as unsportsmanlike or as conspiracy to fix the outcome of a match - but has it ever actually happened?
Ferrari were fined a few years ago for allegedely telling one of their drivers - Felipe Massa - to let another of their drivers - Ferdinand Alonso - pass him in the German Grand Prix. Alonso won the race.
Accusations of letting your team mate pass you seem to be a part of Formula 1. Either as an agreement between drivers or orders from on high, it seems to be well known that it goes on.
It is against the rules, of course.
Was about to post what Dublin11 said about the F1 race until I saw his post. If we expand your question to just general yet deliberate attempts to give the opponent a break, Denny McLain once grooved some pitches to Mickey Mantle at the end of Mantle’s career (and at the end of the season after the Tigers had already sewn up the pennant) and let him hit a home run.
There have been a few instances in cycling where there is a ‘neutralized’ race and a certain team was allowed to cross the finish line first…these are usually tributes to a rider who crashed and died the day before. This happened last year in the Giro d’Italia after Wouter Weylandt had died and sometime in the nineties after Fabio Cassartelli died. I’m sure there have been other examples.
Also in the Grand tours it is common that if a GC (generla classification) contender is helped by a non-GC contender - so he gains more time - , he lets this non-contender win the stage. This kind of favor can even happen a few stages after the perceived ‘help’ from another individual (or team).
The first London Marathon was in the same sort of area you are talking about. The two frontrunners in the men’s race had been battling for miles, but decided to hold each others hands and cross the finishing line together.
It would be more accurate to say that team orders were illegal when that happened, but that the rule has been changed so it would be allowed now.
The rule was imposed after a particularly blatant manipulation, again involving Ferrari, back in 2002. At the time, the Ferrari drivers were Rubens Barrichello and Michael Schumacher. At the 2002 Austrian GP, a weekend in which Barrichello basically outshone his team no. 1 driver, Ferrari ordered Barrichello to let Schumacher past near the end of the race. Barrichello did so only in the finish straight, making it clear what had happened.The public, seeing Barrichello deprived of what they (and everybody else) thought was a thoroughly deserved win, made their displeasure known.
It’s only a matter of time until it happens again, and doubtless there will be calls to reinstate the “no team orders” rule. But right now, team orders are legal.
The Villanova women’s basketball team let Nykesha Sales score an uncontested basket in their game against U. Conn. Sales needed the points to break U. Conn’s all time points scored record, however Sales had blown out her knee in the game prior, an injury that ended her college career. So at the beginning of the game, Sales, knee brace and all, got the ball and had an uncontested layup to give her two points and the record (U. Conn then went on to let 'Nova score an uncontested layup so it was 2-2). Sales got the record and the game went on.
One of the major sports events of the Netherlands is the eleven city skating tour, which is a 200 kilometer tour between 11 cities (most of which only have 10k inhabitants, but that’s beside the point). The race has only been held seven times since the end of World War Two, and only 15 times since the first race in 1909. The last race was held in 1997.
For the 1956 iteration of the race, five skaters entered the last stretch, but had gone through so much together that apparently they refused to sprint to the finish for the victory. They all crossed the finishline together, and were subsequently disqualified for unsportsmanlike conduct.
Far from professional, but in a swim meet when I swam competitively a billion years ago, my parents and I were sitting in the bleachers next to another family whose child, we had just found out, I was going to race against in the next heat together. His parents were putting all kinds of pressure on the kid to win. When it came down to the race itself, it was close at the end, but I looked over and saw him there, coasted on the last stroke and didn’t emphatically reach to hit the timer and let him win. He was happy, his parents were super happy, and my dad asked me if I threw it because of what we heard in the bleachers sitting next to him, which I did do.
A long, long time ago, I was at a swim meet. Now my parents are kinda high pressure, win at all costs, and they were talking to me up in the bleachers before the race. They were laying a lot of pressure on me to win and live up to the family name. I was really embarrassed when some kid that I was going to race against was right next to me and it looked like he was listening in. Anyway, the race started and I was in second most of the time and the kid who was in the lane next to me, the same kid from the bleachers, was in first. He had a very poor finish, and I hit the timer right before him. My parents were so excited for me, and I was super happy too. I sometimes suspect he let me win. If I ever randomly meet that guy, say on a message board, I’d like to shake his hand.
So, if say, Lance Armstrong and Claude Schmuck (who has no hope of winning the overall yellow jersey) mount a successful breakaway (with Claude doing his share of the work), Lance will usually wave Claude ahead over the finish line, rather than sprinting competitively for it? [Does this change if Claude is part of Lance’s team?]
I was going to mention the unforgettable Todd Flanders/Bart Simpson Putt-Putt match, but realized the OP specified professional match.
Thanks for posting this, I was trying to remember this story. It’s one of my all-time favorites.
For those who don’t follow the link, it was a college softball game between Washing Oregon University (WOU) and Central Washington (CWU). CWU needed the win to have a chance at the playoffs.
With two runners on base, the WOU senior right fielder came up to bat and hit the ball over the fence - her first home run ever, in college or high school. But as she rounded first, she missed the base. She turned around to touch the bag… and severely injured her knee, barely able to crawl back to first.
There was no way she could round the bases, so the umpire ruled that the team could call in a pinch-runner, which would turn the home run into a single. Her team were not allowed to help her run, or she would be called out.
So players from the other team picked her up and carried her around the basepaths, setting her down to touch each base, scoring the three runs and knocking themselves out of playoff contention.
When I was a little kid, back in the fall of 1968, Mickey Mantle was nearing retirement, and was tied with Jimmie Foxx at 534 career homers.
By that point, Mickey really wasn’t a great hitter any more, but I remember that Denny McLain (who was the best pitcher in the American League that year) deliberately served up a meatball that Mickey could easily hit out of the park, so he’d pass Foxx.
I remember hearing about this when it happened and was among the minority who considered it highly unsportsmanlike. Sucks that she got hurt, sure, but if she didn’t break the record under actual competitive game conditions it is essentially meaningless.
This thread also makes me wonder about the mindset of any team or individual that would accept such charity. Who really wants a “victory” they didn’t earn?
Wheelz, I agree with you regarding Sales, Strahan and Mantle. I’d be pretty pissed if I was the player (or a fan of the player) whose record they broke due to the charity of the opposing team.
I agree for Strahan and Mantle, but I think there’s a substantial difference between a team record (UConn’s scoring record) and a league record in this respect. From Wikipedia:
I don’t think this one is really comparable to Mantle or Strahan getting a free one.
