Mastermind Heat Four subjects

Good morning all. I’ve just had a glance at tomorrow night’s specialist subjects on the Mastermind website. They are – the playing career of Sunil Gavaskar, The Hunger Games, the composer and conductor Leonard Bernstein and Edvard Munch. I’ll be honest, it’s a case of - pools dividend forecast poor - for me. Cricket is not my favourite sport (unlike several relatives. Both my first cousin and my daughter’s soon to be father-in-law work in cricket in the South East.) I’ve only seen the first film of The Hunger Games series and never read any of the books. I know very little about Leonard Bernstein and as regards Edvard Munch, I’ve seen one version of the Scream in Oslo, but that’s about the length of it. I hope there will be some pieces of low hanging fruit in at least a couple of these rounds, because if I get any points, that will be where they’re most likely to come from.

We got a lot of points in Thursday night’s quiz, but typically it was one of the points we didn’t get that I remember most. Thursday night’s question master, whom I like a great deal as a person, is the same one who has been nicknamed Captain Slapdash by my team. It’s a nickname he’s earned, I’m afraid, by giving some answers that he could have found were just plain wrong by the simplest google search. Well, he was going great guns on Thursday until we got to round 7 out of 8. “Sport.” He announced. “Who was the only British swimmer to win a gold medal in the 1980 Summer Olympics, and you can have a bonus if you give me the event.” – Easy – said I – Duncan Goodhew, 100m breaststroke.- The answer the Captain gave ? Sharron Davies – 400m individual medley.- I couldn’t stop myself from protesting but it did no good.

Being the kind of person I am I thought – well, Duncan definitely won gold, and Sharron definitely got silver on the podium, but in light of revelations about the East German doping programme, and Gold medal recipient Petra Schneider’s subsequent admission that she was doped, has Sharron Davies, I wondered – been retrospectively awarded gold? Apparently not, which is a bit of a scandal if you want my opinion. It’s not even as if she was the only silver, either. Phil Hubble – who I think was swimming for Hounslow at the time - won silver in the 200m butterfly.

Is it some comfort that at least the East German cheating was eventually revealed to the world, even though Sharron Davies has yet to receive the gold medal that her performance deserved? You’d have to ask her that. She’s been quite open about the fact that everyone in the sport knew the East Germans were at it at the time.

Still, it is interesting to speculate how many cheats who won Olympic titles who have never been conclusively revealed as such. The first three Olympic Marathons have all had the finger of suspicion pointed in their direction. First across the line in 1904, Fred Lorz, was definitely cheating, and found out too. He said he had caught a lift after dropping out, and ran into the stadium after being dropped off a mile or so away as a prank. In 1900 baker’s roundsman Michel Theato has been accused of using his local knowledge to take shortcuts enabling him to win. A similar accusation has been levelled at the inaugural 1896 winner, Greek shepherd Spiridon Louis. Host nation Greece were without a win going into the final event, and to an outpouring of national joy the first three men to finish the race were Greek. However, 4^th placed runner Gyula Kellner from Hungary reported that the third placed man had boarded a carriage for at least part of the journey. Kellner was awarded third while the hapless cheat had the athletics vest stripped from his back in front of the stadium. The speculation goes that Louis, the winner, may have cheated in a similar way. I suppose you have to say, though, that considering any Greek winner had been promised free haircuts for life, you can understand the temptations.

Probably the most famous case of a disqualification in an Olympic Marathon, in 1908, wasn’t a case of conscious cheating at all. Dorando Pietri entered the White City stadium comfortably ahead of the field. However he was in a bad way. A group of officials kind of gathered him up and ushered him over the line, by the Royal Box. When the second person over the line was an America athlete called Johnny Hayes the US officials protested and Pietri was disqualified. Urban myth has it that one of the officials in the photograph taken as Pietri was bundled over the line was Sir Arthur Coan Doyle. I suppose there is a vague resemblance, but it has been proven that it wasn’t.

Dorando’s is not quite as sad a story as it may sound, since there was a huge outpouring of sympathy for him and he was presented with an inscribed silver cup by Queen Alexandra. This cup is still in existence and is currently kept in the vault of the Unicorp branch in Carpi in the province of Modena in Italy. For the centenary of the Dorando Marathon, it was displayed in London during the London Marathon.