Cheating in Sports and The Prisoner’s Dilemma

2013 – Lance Armstrong is found guilty of doping and is stripped of 7 Tour de France Gold Medals.

2000 – the Spanish Paralympic Mens Basketball teams takes the Gold medal, only to be disqualified when it was revealed 10 of the 12 athletes suffered no intellectual disability whatsoever.

1988 – Canadian Sprinter Ben Johnson smashed his previous world record in the 100m sprint , but was stripped of his gold medal when he tested positive for steroids.

1980 – Rosie Ruiz won the Boston Marathon with a time of 2:31:56, but a later investigation revealed she had jumped out of the crowd just before the finish line and ran only the last mile of the race.

Sport history is littered with cheating scandals and there are probably hundreds more that went undetected. But what is it that makes people cheat? Fame & glory? Rewards & Benefits? A sport culture where we suspect our opponents of cheating and see it as our only option?

The list of reasons is extensive, but what I want to focus on is the reason why some people might cheat even though as a whole everyone (and the sport world) does better if no one cheats.

Lets do a little reasoning experiment…

You and your friend are arrested for a crime, taken into custody and held in isolation. With no means of communicating neither of you know what the other will do when questioned (will they confess or stay silent?). Then you are both presented (separately) with a deal to encourage co-operation

If neither of you talk you will both spend 1 year in jail

If you confess and your partner remains silent you walk free and they will receive 10 years

If your partner confesses and you remain silent you get 10 years while friend walks

and

If you both confess you each get 5 years

What do you do?

This is known as “The Prisoners Dilemma” because no matter what your partner does you are better off confessing; however the consequences if you both confess are worse than had you both remained silent. So do you make your decision based on ‘greater good’ and trust your partner to do the same or do you act to protect yourself and throw them under the bus?

Now I hope this particular scenario is one that remains hypothetical (lets all stay out of prison ok?), but I want to take the same concept and apply it to cheating in sports.

Cheating In Sports

Say I decide to compete in a Crossfit competition and the workout that determines who advances to the final is Fran

*and for simplicity sake lets assume when people cheat it is all to the same degree

**e.g. sneakily managing to scale back the weight in a workout by 10lbs so that we are doing ‘Fran’ with 55/85 instead of 65/95….

If no one cheats the playing field is even (**assuming its a relatively fair match-up**), and everyone has a shot at winning, but if I cheat while everyone else follows the rules I have the best chance at winning as I’m moving less weight. If, on the other hand, the situation is reversed (i.e. I’m the only one who uses the correct weight of 65lb) my chances of success would be greatly reduced. Finally, if everyone breaks the rules (either to have an advantage or to ‘be safe’ because case everyone is cheating) then we’re pretty much right back to where we were in the first place (we’re all moving the same weights) except now we’re all cheating and we have…

1. Undermined the Integrity of the Sport
2. Placed more value on a title and winning than our own performance and improvements
3. Technically not even ‘played the game/sport’
4. Put ourselves at risk of being caught and disqualified

1. On Undermining the integrity of the Sport

By cheating we are helping to create/support a sport culture where everyone expects the competition to cheat and even if those who don’t want to cheat may feel as though they have to just so they can keep up.

2. On Placing more importance on the title of “Being the Best” than on actually striving to “Be the Best”

If you cheat to win without getting caught but deep down you know that you don’t deserve it… is it really worth it? It should be about being the best athlete and outperforming the competition not about the title and ‘out-cheating’ your opponents

3. On No Longer ‘Playing the Game‘

When we play a game or compete we agree to follow the rules of that sport as we try to reach the game specific goal

(e.g. lift the most weight, do as many rounds as possible, row the furthest…).

There are many different classifications of rules (too many to get into discussing here) the purpose is the same: to ensure we can actually play the game

e.g. You cannot play soccer by having your biggest teammate sit on the opposing team’s goalie (pinning him to the ground) and then proceed to kick the ball into their net repeatedly until time runs out, this is not soccer.

So technically speaking, cheating the rules to win means we haven’t actually played the game and therefore we haven’t won.

and Finally

4. On Putting ourselves at risk of being caught

**N.B. I tried to list the consequences in order of importance (from most to least), and while getting caught sucks and so does the embarrassment/repercussions that go along with it that’s not what we should be worried about. Just because we know we won’t get caught doesn’t mean we should cheat, it doesn’t and we shouldn’t. Period. Sooner or later it will come back to haunt you, and even if it doesn’t you will have to live with it and sometimes that can be the worst punishment.

I realize the Fran example is simplified situation and in the real world there is more going on and other factors can come into play.

For instance most interactions in sport are not just a ‘one off’ and we tend to come up against the same opponents more than once, which means we aren’t going into the competition blind and typically have some idea of how they play

i.e. do they always cheat? play honest? do a bit of both depending on who they are up against?

Furthermore knowing that we will likely go head to head again is a good incentive to uphold the rules because we can cheat once or twice and get away with it but soon they catch on and may retaliate.

There is also the fact that some people may ‘cheat better’ i.e. even though everyone cheated one person may be better off and for them the cheat was ‘worth it’ (And the fact that realistically we aren’t evenly matched up with our competition to begin with, and I could cheat all day against Camille Leblanc-Bazinet but the odds of me beating her are slim to none)

However, I still believe in maintaining our integrity as competitors by upholding the rules and even if we have the most amazing undetectable cheat that guarantees a win we are better off being an honest player because then if we win we know we truly deserve it.

Furthermore there are many incidences of ‘cheats’ being unintentional honest mistakes (e.g. cutting a movement short or accidentally mis-counting a rep) and that’s an unfortunate reality in sports. This can be minimized by making sure everyone understands the rules and standards and having judges/officials present to make sure they are upheld. If you’re watching someone compete and they aren’t hitting full lockout with their arms or fully extending their hips at the top of a box jump chances are it’s because they’re trying so hard to do their best and not because they’re thinking

“hmm if I take 1 inch of movement out of each rep I bet I can get a better score…”

In Conclusion: Cheating in Sport

Cheating occurs for any number of reasons and sometimes it can be difficult to avoid the temptation (especially when stakes are high or cheating seems to be the only way to keep up); but remember we compete in order to push ourselves and have fun and is it really fun to win when you know you don’t deserve it and that you didn’t challenge yourself? Yes it can be tempting especially if it seems like the competition is doing it, but think how much more satisfying it is to win if you compete honestly and know that if you come first, second, third…whatever place you end up…. it is because you earned it and deserve it 100%.