- 4 months ago
From bold-faced denials to elaborate cover stories, some athletes will say anything to protect their reputation. Join us as we count down the most outrageous falsehoods by sports stars that eventually came crashing down! Our list includes scandalous deceptions from cycling, baseball, swimming, and more. Which athlete's web of lies shocked you the most?
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00:00It was a night meant to be a celebration that turned into an international incident.
00:06Welcome to WatchMojo, and today we're counting down our picks for the 10 most outrageous lies athletes told that eventually came to light.
00:13Lance Armstrong, guilty of using performance-enhancing drugs to cheat his way to the top, according to the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency.
00:22Pete Rowe's gambling denial.
00:24When it comes to the world of sports, the conflict of interest that arises from betting on games your own team is competing in is no joke.
00:30Rose is facing the greatest challenge of his storied career.
00:33Reports that the baseball commissioner's office is investigating serious allegations, which sources say focus on Rose's gambling activity.
00:41In fact, doing so can bring your entire career's work into question.
00:44For Pete Rowe's, who spent years denying any participation in gambling, the revelation that he had been lying was devastating.
00:50When I first didn't react to the situation, I kind of listened to my lawyers tell me what to do.
00:55You know, because here I am, in my 40s, I got a six-year-old son and a two-year-old daughter, and all of a sudden I'm out of a job.
01:03In fact, Rose had been betting on Cincinnati Reds games, possibly against their success, all the while serving as their manager.
01:09In 2004, when he finally admitted that he was lying, he tried to claim that his gambling never affected managerial decisions, but the damage was done.
01:16He lost his eligibility for Hall of Fame consideration, and it pretty much ruined his reputation.
01:21The only way I can make my peace with baseball is taking this negative somehow and making it a positive.
01:30Tonya Harding denial of involvement in Kerrigan Attack
01:32Tonya Harding was best known as the first ever American female figure skater to lend a triple axel in competition.
01:38Or at least that was her greatest claim to fame before the attack on her rival, Nancy Kerrigan.
01:59Kerrigan had been assaulted during her preparations for an upcoming competition, leading to an injury to her knee.
02:04The attack plunged Kerrigan's Olympic dreams into doubt and focused suspicion on rival skater Tanya Harding.
02:12Tanya's ex-husband, Jeff Gillooly, was found to have orchestrated the attack to help Tanya's career.
02:18Eventually, it became clear that Harding knew more than she was letting on, and eventually for her role in covering up the scandal, she received a lifetime ban from figure skating.
02:26But as has happened too often in Tanya's life, the choice may not be hers to make.
02:31Ryan Braun's PED Scandal
02:33Ryan Braun managed to serve up a bona fide miracle when he became the first MLB player to ever successfully appeal a PED suspension in 2012.
02:41However, he decided to go on the offensive after that, brazenly claiming that he, and we quote,
02:45I truly believe in my heart, and I would bet my life that this substance never entered my body at any point.
02:51As it turned out, he was actually very guilty.
02:53Further, when he later tested positive for testosterone, there was no escaping justice.
02:57I'm not really, again, going to get into too many specifics. I wish that I hadn't done the press conference. It was a big mistake.
03:03The problem here was Braun literally called several people's character into question while maintaining his own innocence.
03:09In the end, he accepted a 65-game ban and came out of it all looking like the villain.
03:14I think there's something positive that can come from everything. I think, you know, at all times, I always try to see the good in everything.
03:20Things aren't always good, but I do see the good in everything, and it's an opportunity for me to use my experience and mistakes that I've made to help other people avoid making the same mistakes.
03:29Manti Teo hoax girlfriend.
03:31College football star Manti Teo is the victim of a catfishing hoax where a man named Renaya Tuya Sosopo engaged in a multi-year online relationship with him.
03:40He was the star player whose heartbreaking loss of his girlfriend just before a big game made national headlines and made Manti Teo the individual story of the college football season.
03:51Teo thought he was genuinely talking to a woman named Lene Kakua, but lied to his friends and family about the fact that they had never met.
03:58Upon being notified of her supposed death from leukemia, he grieved and mentioned her to the press.
04:02And according to the sports website Deadspin, which broke the story, Lene Kakua was a hoax, and the picture we all saw of her was actually another woman who was very much alive and says she doesn't even know Teo.
04:16But he still never admitted that he hadn't met her personally.
04:19Sure, it's the smaller lie of the two, but people became skeptical and began to suspect that Teo was complicit, and the whole thing was a scam to draw sympathy and attention.
04:26Call him naive if you wish, but this whole thing was truly unfortunate.
04:29But I never in a million years would have thought that that story would inspire people all across the world, would change the narrative.
04:37Barry Bonds' steroid denial.
04:39We could have very easily gone for Mark McGuire here, but for our money, watching Barry Bonds lie through his teeth was truly the ultimate betrayal of fan trust.
04:47And Barry Bonds rubbed a lot of people the wrong way.
04:50After being accused of PED use, Bonds evaded telling the truth like a pro, eventually whittling down his excuses to plain ignorance.
04:57You made this decision. You went for the greed, you went for the money, you went for the fame.
05:02He claimed that he had no idea what anyone was giving him, and though he never did get convicted of perjury, he'd be hard-pressed to find anyone defending him these days.
05:10As the all-time leader in MLB home runs, it's a terrible shame that Bonds' legacy has been called into dispute like this.
05:15You chose the money, and now you want your reputation back, and you can't have both.
05:22Number 5. Marion Jones-Balco Lies
05:24Marion Jones certainly wouldn't be the first athlete to lie under oath.
05:28But her fall from grace was definitely among the most shocking.
05:31But from her greatest successes came a doping scandal that ended her competitive career.
05:37After stunning the world with five medals at the 2000 Olympics, Jones was on top of her game.
05:42But in 2007, she admitted that she had lied to federal agents about her involvement with the infamous Balco doping scandal.
05:48I want to ask for your forgiveness for my actions, and I hope you can find it in your heart to forgive me.
05:56On top of that, it emerged that she had also been using PEDs during her career, leading to a six-month prison sentence for perjury.
06:03Jones was stripped of her medals, and her reputation to this day remains in tatters.
06:07But knowing that it didn't need to happen the way that it did always will stick with me as a moment that is hard.
06:17Alex Rodriguez, steroid denial.
06:19Most steroid users aren't going to flat-out admit that they're lying without some serious pressure being applied first.
06:24For the record, have you ever used steroids, human growth hormone, or any other performance-enhancing substance?
06:31No.
06:33Have you ever been tempted to use any of those things?
06:38No.
06:39But for the MLB superstar, Alex Rodriguez, he played the victim for just about as long as he could.
06:44Eventually, he was forced into a partial confession, admitting that he had used some PEDs earlier in his career.
06:49But once he budged on that, people immediately lost all trust.
06:52Again, at the time of that culture, there was no illegal or legal.
06:57He tried to apologize for his actions, but it was pretty obvious that he was only sorry because he got caught.
07:02He ended up getting suspended for the entire 2014 season, and his reputation took a hit that it would never bounce back from.
07:08Alex Rodriguez fighting for his baseball life.
07:12An independent arbitrator slapping him with a 162-game ban for violating the league's drug policy
07:19and for allegedly interfering with the biogenesis investigation.
07:23Ryan Lochte fabricated robbery, a.k.a. Lochtegate.
07:26This one falls firmly into the category of stories you need to hear to fully believe.
07:30He took our money, he took my wallet, and then...
07:34But he left your cell phone, he left your credential.
07:36He left my cell phone, he left my credential, but he took my wallet and he took all the guys in his tech.
07:42Swimmer Ryan Lochte was in Brazil representing the United States at the Rio Olympics when the unthinkable happened.
07:48Lochte and three of his teammates were robbed at gunpoint by thugs disguised as policemen.
07:52However, this, as it turned out, was not what happened at all.
07:56The thing that I told that wasn't true was having the gun pointed to my forehead and caught.
08:01That was...that was over-exaggerated.
08:04The so-called robbers were actually security guards at a gas station that caught Lochte and co. urinating publicly and vandalizing a framed poster.
08:12This revelation went down about as poorly as you might think,
08:14with Lochte and the three others being made to pay a fine and apologize publicly.
08:19I'm a human. I made a mistake and that's something that I'm gonna have to live with.
08:24Tiger Woods' Perfect Family Deception
08:25Tiger Woods was truly one of the defining athletes of his generation.
08:29A competitor who dominated the competition to a degree that had rarely been seen before.
08:34Tiger Woods picked up eight wins in 99, nine in 2000.
08:40Number one player in the world by a wide margin.
08:44For years, he cultivated a clean image as a mild-mannered family man.
08:47But in 2009, his carefully crafted facade fell apart in the most dramatic way imaginable.
08:52Reports of multiple extramarital affairs shattered our perception of Tiger,
08:55destroying his reputation in one fell swoop.
08:57I owe a lot of people an apology.
09:00I hurt a lot of people, not just my wife, my friends, my colleagues, the public, kids who looked up to me.
09:09There were a lot of people that thought I was a different person.
09:13To make matters worse, persistent injuries also helped him derailing his golfing success.
09:17It was a saga that will always define him to some degree,
09:20even though his unbelievable 2019 Masters comeback certainly deserves to be mentioned.
09:24Many doubted we'd ever see it, but here it is.
09:30The return to glory!
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09:51Lance Armstrong doping denials
09:53Lance Armstrong is undoubtedly the most famous cyclist to ever live,
09:57and the work he has done for charity cannot and should not be understated.
10:00Before the Lance Armstrong Foundation, what it was like to have cancer was totally different.
10:05It was much more private and much more isolated.
10:12Lance removed the stigma of being a young adult with cancer.
10:15But to see the face of cycling tied to the most famous steroid scandal of all time was as disappointing as can be.
10:20Not to mention the fact that Armstrong routinely denied all PED use and attacked the character of anyone who made such accusations.
10:27We did what we had to do to win.
10:29When the chickens finally came home to roost in 2013, the fallout was devastating.
10:34Not only was Armstrong revealed to be a competitive cheat,
10:37but also a barefaced liar who had deceived millions of people while earning a small fortune at the same time.
10:43There was no coming back from this one.
10:45But I wouldn't change a thing. I've said that three times and I'll say it again.
10:47I would not change a thing.
10:49But which crazy athlete's lie sticks out in your memory the most?
10:52Be sure to let us know in the comments below.
10:54I did take a banned substance.
10:57And for that, I'm very sorry and deeply regretful.
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