Faster, Higher, Sleazier

By Bruce McCall

The official announcement that cheating has been added to the schedule of the Salt Lake City Olympic Games is being widely applauded as an ingenious gambit that instantly renders the current Canadian-Russian skating brouhaha, indeed all Games-related scandals, moot. Slimy and underhanded representatives of prestige-crazed nations the world over are ecstatic. "I salute the Olympic Committee for at long last granting chicanery its rightful place in amateur athletics," stated one behind-the-scenes manipulator, using a false identity. "No longer must we hide our handiwork in the shadows, only to be hauled before this or that tribunal for the simple crime of getting caught."

The move injected an immediate and welcome dollop of drama to the Salt Lake City scene. Indeed, a gang of Romanians in disguise sneaked off with a gold even before the official start of competition, stealing the watches of six timekeepers on the bus taking them to the first cheating event--in a record 32 sec. That event, the men's equipment-tampering relay, was won by North Korea's team in a dramatic upset over highly favored Iraq. The North Koreans had broken into the wrong locker room, lost their tools and failed to sabotage the blade of a single U.S. skater. Only a brilliant come-from-behind cash bribe in the final minute allowed them to eke out a perfect 100-point score. Meanwhile, allegations that he had been pressured to commence the cheating games without informing the teams of several participating nations were immediately confirmed by the Cheating Sports president, who awarded another gold, to Iran, for slipping $1,000 in cash into his wallet while he slept in his hotel room.

In the freestyle Tonya event, U.S. kneecappers, as expected, made a gold-silver-bronze sweep of it, but by and large the skullduggery inherent in cheating makes handicapping the favorites in most events difficult if not impossible. At Salt Lake City even the old stereotypes--nobody can cork a curling stone like a Canadian, the Swiss have a lock on clock slowing, don't even try outfoxing the French when it comes to slipping small animals into the luge run--promise to be severely tested. Blame escalating commercialism and its henchman, dollar power. Item: tiny Hindu Kush hires away the legendary snowshoe-warping coach of a major European cheating team for an estimated $1 million, cash--a staggering sum, even if the bills were counterfeit. Nor should the astonishing recent advances in technique be discounted. "Cheating is a lot more sophisticated now than in the old days," marvels one grizzled sleazeball. "Back then a suitcase full of cash and a job for somebody's idiot nephew could get your city the Olympics. Nowadays, thanks to Enron and the 2000 Florida voting and whatnot, everybody's on the case all the time. You're smart, or you're toast. For instance, everybody knows that a certain nation entered in these games has a cross-country skier-tripping coach who works by two-way radio out of the slammer a thousand miles away. He'll never get nabbed. Beautiful!"

That the tricksters and cheats are strutting their stuff at all is some-thing of a miracle on ice and snow. The sudden admission of cheating as an Olympic sport threw Salt Lake City into a tizzy of frantic preparation to cram in a heavy schedule of new events before the Games' official close. A special commission, many of its members flaunting forged credentials, worked through the night at an improvised headquarters in the costliest suite in one of Salt Lake City's plushest hotels, reportedly paid for with a stolen credit card. By dawn the next day, they had drawn up a complete list of events fit to challenge the creme de la creme of the international sporting community's champion fixers and manipulators at their own game, and organized the venues, before vanishing with an estimated $5,000 worth of hotel bedding, silverware and towels.

All for the glory of the gold, the silver, the bronze--well, sort of. "You wouldn't expect real gold, silver and bronze, would you?" chortles one shameless rule bender. "The medals issued to winning cheaters are actually pot metal, painted. So afterward, when they sell them to some unwitting dupe for big bucks, it'll be a memory to last a lifetime."