2007—the Worst Year of Sports World

Drugs, denials, defamation, and deaths—the world of sports has seen all these and more in 2007. In short, many sports of sports world hogged the limelight for the wrong reasons this year. And most of these controversies came to light at the end of 2007—whether it was Mclaren team’s involvement in the Ferrari spying saga or American sprint queen Marion Jones confession that she took performance enhancing drugs in the 2000 Sydney Olympic Games or the former world number one Martina Hingis getting caught in drug test for cocaine consumption.

That’s just few cases. Let’s talk about athletics first. Athletics, which normally springs to limelight only during the Olympic Games, Commonwealth Games and Asian Games, first hit the headlines when Asafa Powell created 100m world record by clocking 9.74 sec in Rieti, Italy. He then announced to the world that he is capable of running 100m even faster than this. And the world of sport was in jubilant mood, when suddenly shocking news about Marion Jones confessing about the use of performance enhancing drugs disrupted the jubilant mood of sports fans.

For many sports fans, it was hard to believe that confession. Marion Jones had won five Olympic medals during the 2000 Sydney Olympic games.

During that same time in October, Mclaren’s was fiercely fighting Ferrari team both on the formula 1 racing circuit and at the court in the spying saga case. Unfortunately, Mclaren, who was having great time in the Formula One with both its driver in contention for driver’s championship and itself as a sole contender for the constructor’s championship, but sadly, they lost everything—the case and the championship in both category.

Formula One was also in news for the infighting between the McLaren teammates—Lewis Hamilton and Alonso Fernando.

Then, tennis sport that so far never got negative publicity suddenly was in news when Andy Murray revealed that men to throw away match approached him. He came out with other starling revelation that many tennis players were aware of this. Soon, few hardly known tennis players too strengthen Murray’s claim that men to play sub-par too approached them.

And amid talk about match fixing, the governing body of tennis began its enquiry and poor Nikolay Davydenko was grilled for losing a match against a low-ranked player, but later ATP tennis gave him a clean chit.
The other negative press that tennis got was when Martina Hingis was reported that she had tested positive for drug test during Wimbledon.

All these cases and controversies will be forgotten in sports world, but what will haunt the sports world for long will be the deaths of Bob Woolmer, Pakistan cricket coach who died in mysterious condition during the 2007 World Cup in South Africa, and the death of American marathoner Ryan Shay during the U.S. Olympic men’s marathon trials for the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games.

May their souls rest in peace?