| 1 | ---- |
| 2 | [[foldercontrol]] |
| 3 | |
| 4 | [[folder:Multiple Sports]] |
| 5 | * The [[UsefulNotes/COVID19Pandemic COVID-19 pandemic]] caused many sporting events to be postponed, canceled, held without spectators, or moved to another country altogether, including tournaments, Olympic qualifying events, and races. This even put a big question mark on the 2020 Olympic Games in Tokyo due to Japan's proximity to China, where the disease originated, and how contagious the coronavirus is; the IOC and Prime Minister Abe eventually agreed to postpone the games to 2021, with the caveat that if it wasn't hosted then [[https://www.forbes.com/sites/marleycoyne/2020/04/28/next-years-olympics-will-be-scrapped-if-pandemic-persists-through-2021/#7f65ed1036bd it would be canceled entirely]]; as it happens, the 2020 Olympics did go on, albeit one year late). |
| 6 | ** Even entire ''seasons'' were affected by the pandemic: the NBA suspended its season after two members of the Utah Jazz tested positive, and the NHL quickly followed suit due to many teams sharing an arena with NBA teams. Opening Day for MLB was also delayed, and March Madness (i.e., the NCAA Division I men's basketball tournament) was canceled (as was the women's version). |
| 7 | ** Outside of North America, the seasons of the main European football leagues (the Premier League, Bundesliga, Serie A, and La Liga), Australian Football League, National Rugby League, Six Nations, and the Indian Premier League were suspended, and Wimbledon was canceled entirely, among ''far'' too many other competitions to list here. Only two domestic football leagues on Earth continued on without postponement or cancellation, in Belarus and Nicaragua. |
| 8 | ** And when sports competitions came back, as demonstrated in Taiwan's baseball league, South Korea's baseball and soccer leagues, and the German Bundesliga, spectators were not allowed, at least in the initial stages of reopening. The major sports leagues in the United States also explored playing games in a limited number of venues (2-4 "hub cities" for teams, as opposed to 30-32 individual stadiums or arenas) to enhance safety procedures. |
| 9 | *** The NBA would end up hosting its playoffs at Walt Disney World, and the NHL opted for two bubbles in Edmonton and Toronto for its own (with UsefulNotes/TheStanleyCup Final being hosted in Edmonton). The WNBA played an abbreviated season, including playoffs, in a bubble in Bradenton, Florida (not far from the Tampa Bay area). MLB and the main European football leagues chose not to use a bubble for a truncated regular season, and the former consequently had to deal with multiple instances of postponed games due to positive tests; MLB did decide on a bubble for its playoffs, based in four sites in Texas and California. The UsefulNotes/UEFAChampionsLeague did use a bubble format for their knockout stages, with all teams being moved to Lisbon after the Round of 16. UEFA did the same for its Europa League and Women's Champions League, with the Europa League being moved to several venues in Germany in the middle of the round of 16 and the WCL being moved to the Spanish Basque Country after its round of 16. The NCAA held its 2021 men's and women's D-I basketball tournaments in semi-bubble conditions, with the men's tournament entirely in Indiana[[labelnote:*]](four venues in UsefulNotes/{{Indianapolis}}, plus Bloomington and West Lafayette)[[/labelnote]] and the women's tournament almost entirely in San Antonio[[labelnote:*]](plus Austin and San Marcos)[[/labelnote]]. |
| 10 | ** While Australia had a lot of success in combatting the virus and was back to a semblance of normalcy by early 2021, the Australian Open had a rough time getting off the ground. The event usually happens throughout the second half of January, but it was pushed back to mid-February to allow everyone to get there and through the mandatory two-week quarantine. The tournament organizers had arranged for the players and their staffs to come on 15 chartered flights from various places around the world and keep everyone in a softer form of the quarantine than your average Joe had to (they were allowed out for five hours a day for practice) to enter the country. However, two flights coming in from Abu Dhabi and Los Angeles had positive cases, causing about 50 players and 200 people total to have to go into a hard two-week quarantine. Everyone was released from it on 29 January with two weeks of friendlies to get everyone back into the swing of things and get used to playing in front of a crowd again, albeit one capped at 50% capacity. |
| 11 | [[/folder]] |
| 12 | |
| 13 | [[folder:Auto Racing]] |
| 14 | * Though the history of UsefulNotes/FormulaOne includes some truly iconic races, it also includes some incredibly troubled ones. |
| 15 | ** The revival of the United States Grand Prix was briefly endangered by a contract dispute between Bernie Ecclestone and the backers of Circuit of the Americas, a purpose-built road course in Austin, Texas, which nearly led to the abandonment of the track. However, the parties were able to come to terms, and the race ultimately went off on schedule at the end of the 2012 season. The same can't be said of [=F1's=] planned US street race, the Grand Prix of America in New Jersey, which slipped into DevelopmentHell amidst vicious contract disputes after missing the schedule for ''three straight years'' due to lack of funds for construction.[[note]]With Ecclestone no longer in the picture after the sale of F1 to Liberty Media and the concept being taken to Miami instead (the Miami Grand Prix, first held in May 2022, runs on a street course near Hard Rock Stadium, home of the NFL's Miami Dolphins), and now with a ''third'' American race in Las Vegas, the NYC Formula 1 race is all but dead.[[/note]] |
| 16 | ** One of the biggest race day debacles in Formula One's history happened at [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bl2n6FjuyPI the 2005 United States Grand Prix in Indianapolis]]. During practice, multiple cars running on Michelin tires suffered failures on Turn 13 (a banked oval corner; the only one on the entire Formula 1 calendar). Michelin realised that their tires were unsafe for this circuit, and could fail after as few as 10 laps. Not helping matters was a new-for-2005 rule preventing cars from changing tires during the race. Last-minute negotiations with FIA to add a chicane or otherwise slow down the cars going into that turn went nowhere; so after taking part in the parade lap, 14 of the 20 drivers returned to the pits on orders from their teams and didn't race (despite some pleading to be allowed to start). The other six drivers (who were using Bridgestone tires instead, and benefited from the fact that Bridgestone's Firestone subsidiary was the tire supplier of the UsefulNotes/IndyCar oval racing series[[note]]The track had been re-paved after the 2004 race with a much more abrasive surface, Bridgestone knew what to expect and brought a tire with a much harder (and slower) compound, Michelin had to just take a guess and got it wrong. Eventually F1 would throw the black flag on both tire suppliers and bring in Pirelli[[/note]]) quickly realized that all they had to do was avoid crashing and finish the race, and they would get standings points by default. So the race became a high-speed parade, with none of the drivers seriously challenging each other; this only enraged the crowd, some of whom even threw trash on the track. Spectators were further angered when their requests for a refund were refused; thousands of them left the race early, and those who remained loudly booed the top three finishers on the podium. The teams later pointed out that under Indiana state law, they could have faced criminal charges for reckless endangerment had they forced their drivers to take part - and that was if no one had gotten hurt. If someone had... (It's also believed that law was why a potential lawsuit by the FIA was avoided: if ''they'' had forced the drivers to race, ''they'd'' be the ones facing charges.) This race not only killed Indianapolis as the location of the United States Grand Prix, but also the presence of multiple competing tire manufacturers that teams could choose from[[note]]Though this isn't really a bad thing, as competing tire manufacturers have a tendency to sacrifice safety for the sake of speed, with sadly predictable results. This has also been a problem in NASCAR (and probably warrants its own entry), as explained by these [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FIwr2uCNXIc two]] [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eu5b8oYwiQM videos]]. Having one company make the tires for every car on the track means the focus is on safety and quality control, speed doesn't matter as much since all the tires are supposed to be identical[[/note]], as well as the "no tire changes" rule altogether. |
| 17 | ** The 2015 German Grand Prix. Normally, the race is alternated between two venues, the Nürburgring and Hockenheim. The Nürburgring was scheduled to host in 2015, but had for many years been suffering financial difficulties when hosting the race, and after failing to reach a new agreement with Ecclestone, dropped itself from the calendar. Hockenheim then bowed out, saying that the last-minute dropping left them no time to promote the race, leaving Formula One without the German Grand Prix for the first time in over 50 years. Especially sad because three of the drivers were German, and ''the defending constructor's champion'' Mercedes was German (and tried to save the German GP using their own money). |
| 18 | ** The Indian Grand Prix was troubled from the start: yet another country with a lack of motorsport culture (at the time the race was first proposed there were only ''two'' raceways), and after elections changed the government policy, neither track was interested in hosting. So a new one had to be built. The site changed at least once, farmers protested because their land had been taken away, and the workers constructing the track were treated poorly. Once it opened it was received pretty well, but it only went on for three years before tax issues forced the FIA to cancel the race (specifically, the Uttar Pradesh government decided to classify the event as "entertainment" rather than "sport", entitling them to a portion of the teams' revenue as tax). Ecclestone hoped to put it back on the calendar once the tax issues are resolved, but it wasn't resolved, and now with Ecclestone's ouster from power following the Liberty Media takeover, the Indian Grand Prix is likely dead. The Buddh International Circuit, the new track that caused so much controversy, only hosted races for a couple minor championships before being turned into a quarantine facility during the coronavirus pandemic. |
| 19 | ** The Korean Grand Prix was no picnic either: construction on the track went so slowly that it didn't get approval to hold races until ''13 days'' before the inaugural race, there was a severe lack of accommodations for all the personnel needed (to the point that many of them had to stay in ''love motels''), the location was prone to heavy rainfall, and the time they chose to start the race left them with little room for delays (which of course happened because of the aforementioned rain). As a result, many of the races ended at ''dusk'' and lighting was inadequate. Combine that with how unpopular it was with the drivers and the high costs to run the race, it was dropped for 2014 and failed to come back, despite signing a seven-year contract. |
| 20 | ** All these, however, pale to the events of the 2011 Bahrain Grand Prix, which ended up cancelled altogether after protests sprung up in Bahrain. Even when those protests forced the cancellation of another race, the FIA and Ecclestone insisted the race would go on, and protesters alleged that the Crown Prince only agreed to negotiate with them so that the race - his pet project - would go on. Eventually, the race was cancelled [[note]](and a persistent rumor was that it only happened because the UK had advised against traveling there, which would have removed half the grid and most of the personnel)[[/note]], but they tried to reschedule it for later in the year. Human rights protesters complained about how the FIA were quick to schedule it despite continuing protests, while the teams' association pointed out that races could not be rescheduled without their unanimous approval, per the FIA rules, and found the new date logistically impossible, forcing them to drop the race entirely for that year. It's since come back, but not without its hiccups: every year there are protests, and one year a team flat-out refused to come to a practice session because they had been hit by a firebomb. |
| 21 | * UsefulNotes/IndyCar planned to host a street race in Boston but, much like the aborted Olympic bid, public opinion was overwhelmingly against holding the race. Then it got canceled. Then it turned into a "he-said-she-said" situation: the organizers blamed the government for making increasing and unreasonable demands, the government said the organizers didn't know what they were doing and were mismanaging it into the ground. Then the organizers filed for bankruptcy and claimed they had no funds to issue refunds, forcing [=IndyCar=] to step up and offer their own money to refund with, in order to maintain the goodwill of their fans. Now the organizers were left facing bankruptcy and ''two'' lawsuits, one from [=IndyCar=] for breach of contract, and one from the Massachusetts attorney general on behalf of the ticket holders who didn't get refunds. The only silver lining in all this is that Watkins Glen International (always a popular racetrack) offered to step in and host an [=IndyCar=] race for the first time in six years. |
| 22 | * UsefulNotes/{{NASCAR}} had its own example with the 2011 Quaker State 400, the first Cup Series race at Kentucky Speedway, located about 40 miles (65 km) from downtown Cincinnati. Not so much the race itself, mind you — the cluster primarily came with the logistical planning, or lack thereof. |
| 23 | ** While the track owner, Speedway Motorsports, expanded the seating capacity for the track's Cup Series debut, it made no significant upgrades to the surrounding infrastructure, adding only a large RV parking space. Keep in mind that the track already had a reputation for race-related traffic snarls. |
| 24 | ** When raceday arrived, so did the traffic. And ''how''. The race was set to start at 7:30 PM, but Interstate 71, which passes next to the track, began to back up as early as ''11:00 AM''. By 3:30 PM, I-71 was backed up more than 15 miles to the north (i.e., nearly halfway to Cincinnati). At 6:00, I-71 was backed up for more than 20 miles in both directions, and side roads in the area were backed up for more than 10 miles. Even at 9:00, halfway through the race, backups were still miles long. Then, at 9:30, traffic patterns were changed to outbound, and some fans who had tickets to the race were turned away without ever making it to the track. |
| 25 | ** Want more examples of how bad the traffic was? State Senate president David Williams, the Republican candidate for Kentucky governor, left the state capital of Frankfort, about 45 miles away, at 2:00 PM in order to make an appearance at the track. He couldn't make his way through the traffic [[note]](his opponent, incumbent Democratic Governor Steve Beshear, was already at the track and delivered the "Gentlemen, start your engines" command)[[/note]]. Even one of the ''racers'' (Denny Hamlin) got caught in the jam, nearly missing the pre-race drivers' meeting. |
| 26 | ** The logistical problems weren't restricted to traffic. A shortage of portable toilets left many fans waiting a half-hour or more to answer nature's call. Other fans reported shortages at the concession stands. |
| 27 | ** Fortunately, Speedway Motorsports quickly learned its lesson. First, it gave holders of unscanned tickets from this race a very generous ticket exchange offer for future races at the track (or at other company-owned tracks). It also bought a farm next to the track property to further expand the parking, and worked closely with Kentucky authorities to improve access to the track.[[note]]Sadly it didn't help the track's long-term future, as it (along with Chicagoland Speedway in Illinois) was removed from the schedules of all 3 of NASCAR's major series following the 2020 season, though not due to any logistical issues. NASCAR reorganized their schedule to coincide with the planned 2021 debut of the 7th generation "Next Gen" cars (which didn't actually debut until 2022 thanks to development time being lost to the COVID-19 pandemic), adding more road courses and shorter tracks and reducing the amount of races held at 1.5 mile "cookie cutter" ovals. Kentucky was the first of those tracks to get the axe simply due to having a reputation among both fans and people within NASCAR as a track that produced boring races.[[/note]] |
| 28 | * The 1969 Talladega 500, the inaugural race on the Alabama International Motor Speedway (now the Talladega Superspeedway) on September 14, 1969. [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t5p6TajVQI8 This video]] calls it "the worst UsefulNotes/{{NASCAR}} race ever", and goes into detail as to why. |
| 29 | ** It started with "Big Bill" France, the founder and owner of NASCAR, having a dream. He wished to create the largest oval circuit in the world, and after looking at several sites across the southern US [[note]](France's original plan was to place the track in Greenville, South Carolina, but the then-state-wide blue laws forbade any sporting events on Sundays; an attempt to petition the state legislature to lift the laws failed)[[/note]], settled on the vacant Anniston Air Force Base about halfway between Talladega and Anniston in Alabama due to its proximity to UsefulNotes/{{Atlanta}} and Birmingham and to Interstate 20. France agreed to buy the land in exchange for also paying for the cost of new runways adjacent to his speedway in case the airbase ever had to be reopened; today, those runways are used for Talladega Municipal Airport. Construction went as planned, even though it had to be completed at a very rapid pace in order to get the track ready for opening day... |
| 30 | ** ...which is where the problems came in. The VIP suites were unfinished, with tables composed of sheets of plywood resting on sawhorses and guests having to wear earplugs during the race because the windows that would've muffled the road noise hadn't been installed yet. More critically, the drivers were only allowed to do test runs on the track five days before race day, and they reported handling problems before finding that, after only a few laps, the tires on their cars were shredded. The stress of racing on Talladega, in which cars were meant to run for hours on end at over 190 miles per hour on a track whose turns were banked at 33 degrees, was simply too much for their tires to take, as Goodyear and Firestone, NASCAR's main tire suppliers, had never dreamed of a track like this - especially given that, since the two companies were in the midst of a fierce battle to become NASCAR's sole tire supplier, they were CuttingCorners in order to make softer tires with more grip. Firestone withdrew their tires from the race to avoid a PR disaster, but Goodyear stayed in the game, hoping that it would win them the tire war. |
| 31 | ** By the Friday before race day, the drivers had had enough, and appealed to France and the newly-formed [[InsistentTerminology totally-not-a-union]] Professional Driver Association (PDA) to get the race postponed. France, however, was deep in debt from construction of the track, and he needed the race to make his money back; it would go on as scheduled no matter what. In response, every PDA-affiliated driver save for Richard Brickhouse (who raced for Chrysler's company team and was offered the opportunity to [[AwesomeDearBoy race their new Dodge Charger Daytona]]) [[ScrewThisImOuttaHere boycotted the race]] out of fear for their safety, knowing that a tire blowout at such speeds could easily lead to a fatal wreck. According to Bobby Allison, when France called Allison a coward for not wanting to race, his fellow driver [=LeeRoy=] Yarbrough [[RageBreakingPoint punched France in the face]]. |
| 32 | ** With most of NASCAR's top-tier drivers boycotting the Talladega 500, France, desperate to fill seats, offered NASCAR fans free tickets to next year's Daytona 500 if they came to see this race. To fill the pack (only three drivers — Brickhouse, Bobby Isaac, and Jim Vandiver — hadn't joined the boycott), he allowed in drivers from from a completely different series, racing slower vehicles than the stock cars used in NASCAR. |
| 33 | ** Fortunately, the tire problem was ultimately averted, as Goodyear flew in new tires at the last minute that proved capable of handling Talladega. The race itself still didn't go off without a hitch, however, as a scoring error meant that the race ended with both Brickhouse and Vandiver thinking that they'd won. According to legend, Chrysler sweet-talked France into giving the win to Brickhouse in the new Charger Daytona, as they wanted it to look good against the older-model Charger that Vandiver was driving. Vandiver was furious, and insisted until the day he died that he, and not Brickhouse, had won the race. |
| 34 | ** As the cherry on top, during the very next race that season, a PDA-affiliated driver, angry at Brickhouse for crossing the picket line to run the Talladega 500, spun him out as revenge. We know it to be deliberate because the driver who did it [[http://brock.lastcar.info/2017/10/92869-as-with-much-of-his-career.html told a photographer]] where and when he'd get a great shot of a crash. The PDA ultimately folded a few weeks later, its attempt to pressure France into postponing the race having failed by virtue of it having gone on anyway without the problem that they had feared. |
| 35 | * Because of the coronavirus outbreak in 2020, many races hosted in China were cancelled. |
| 36 | * With over a century's existence, the Indianapolis 500 has had its fair share of troubled events, but one would have to search long and hard to find an Indianapolis 500 more troubled than [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1973_Indianapolis_500 the 1973 running]]. |
| 37 | ** The lead-up began on April 28 with drivers - aided by the fact that the U.S. Auto Club, or USAC, which the Indy 500 was governed by at the time had allowed bolt-on wings the previous year - doing time trials and practices with increasingly high speeds[[note]]on May 5, Swede Savage hit 197.802 miles per hour; the fastest speed up to then[[/note]] but would soon be hit with the first of what would be a long string of rain delays. |
| 38 | ** May 12 (the day of qualifying for the pole position) saw over 250,000 arrive at Indianapolis Motor Speedway in hopes of seeing the first driver cross the 200 MPH mark. Johnny Rutherford would not crack that barrier but finished with a 4-lap track record of 198.413 MPH. However, this day was marred by tragedy earlier in the day when Art Pollard hit the outside wall in Turn 1 during practice, spun to the inside and flipped over, ultimately dying later that day from a series of injuries including pulmonary damage due to flame inhalation, a severe spinal injury and multiple 3rd degree burns. |
| 39 | ** A week later, the May 19 time trials were forced to end early due to severe weather. The weather cleared up the next day for "Bump" Day as the field of 33 cars was officially set. There was also a cheating controversy involving Sam Posey, who found himself initially as first alternate (and would get in if one of the others was forced to withdraw) only for Posey to be caught trying to disguise his #34 entry in an attempt to make a second attempt to qualify). |
| 40 | ** After the May 26 driver's parade[[note]]for 1973 only; the Indianapolis 500 parade was held on Saturday afternoon after previously being held at night during the week[[/note]] and the May 27 driver's meeting; the cars took to the track on Memorial Day, May 28[[note]]at the time, the Indianapolis Motor Speedway did not hold events on Sunday, a practice that would change the following year[[/note]]...only for rain to last for 4 hours, pushing the start time from 11:00 a.m. local time to just after 3:00 p.m. The race would end up with an 11-car "Big One" just as the race began when Steve Krisiloff's car developed ignition trouble - with Salt Walther tangling wheels with Jerry Grant before flying into the catch fence, ripping out 70 feet of catch fence and 75 gallons of flaming methanol, resulting in Walther and 11 spectators being injured (Walther was severely burned and would remain hospitalized for several months and battled a long-lasting drug addiction as a result of the painkillers used during his recovery), resulting in the race being red-flagged and the start officially negated. Finally; as attempts to cleanup the damage and repair the catch fence began, it began raining again; forcing officials to schedule a Tuesday morning start. |
| 41 | ** Tuesday, May 29: The cars damaged in the crash were allowed to make repairs[[note]]as well as the car driven by Bob Harkey, whose engine failed the morning before but whose team decided to pretend to have it pull in for repairs just before the previous day's wreck, which had a new engine installed overnight[[/note]] and - after drivers complained in the pre-race meeting that the pace car was too slow - the scheduled start date was 9:00 a.m. local time, only for a [[RuleOfThree brief spurt of rain]] to push the start time to 10:15 a.m., with the track red-flagged during the second parade lap due to more rain. As the rain continued, several bored drivers decided to hold an impromptu soccer match on pit lane. Finally; the race was once again rescheduled for Wednesday, May 30. |
| 42 | ** Wednesday, May 30: Once again, rain would threaten the race; as by this time the constant rain saw the infield covered with mud and USAC forced to adjust the schedule, delaying the next race in Milwaukee by a week and causing the Indianapolis Health Department to threaten to cancel the event if it rained out again due to the deteriorating conditions[[note]]this also forced some shuffling with [[Creator/AmericanBroadcastingCompany ABC Sports]]. ABC, which at the time carried the race on a same-day tape delay - which would be the case until its first live broadcast in 1986 - had to go without Jackie Stewart in the booth for Wednesday's coverage due to Stewart being committed to a Formula One race at the Monaco Grand Prix, which he won. Replacing Stewart in the booth was longtime racing journalist Chris Economacki[[/note]]. Additionally; a much smaller crowd was reported (while some estimates were as low as 20,000; others noted the race went up to 125,000 attending by the time it finally started; though much of that was due to traffic jams being so severe in Speedway, IN and western Indianapolis that some schools were closed - resulting in busloads of children being admitted free. The race itself - despite only 2 cautions in the first 58 laps when it finally started at 2:10 p.m. local time - saw a number of drivers forced out; with Peter Revson[[note]]an heir to the Revlon fortune[[/note]] crashing early and mechanical troubles ending the day for NASCAR legend Bobby Allison, 1969 Indy 500 and then-3 time USAC champion Mario Andretti, then-3 time Indy 500 and 5-time USAC champion A.J. Foyt, pole-sitter Johnny Rutherford and defending Indianapolis 500 champion Mark Donohue. |
| 43 | ** Then, tragedy struck twice on Lap 59. First, Swede Savage - who had pitted for fuel and tires two laps earlier and was 2nd to leader Al Unser - lost control of his car as it slid to the inside of the track at full speed before hitting the inside wall, causing an explosion that threw the vehicle, with Savage still inside, across the track while [[NightmareFuel still conscious and exposed to the flaming methanol fuel]], forcing a stoppage. As this took place, safety truck driver Jerry Flake was dispatched to the scene and as he went down pit road suddenly saw Armando Teran, a pit board man for Graham [=McRae=], bolt onto the track before the truck struck Teran, who suffered crushed ribs and a broken skull and died shortly after arriving at a local hospital[[note]]while media reports criticized Flake, USAC rules at the time did allow a safety truck to drive in the opposite direction of the race cars. The following year, USAC would [[ObviousRulePatch change the rules]] to disallow both those actions and prohibiting the pit board man from leaving the pit wall as Teran had done[[/note]]. As for Savage, he was hospitalized with third-degree burns and flame inhalation but was initially in stable condition only for his condition to decline; with Savage ultimately passing away after 33 days on July 2[[note]]the exact cause is a matter of dispute. Initial reports suggested kidney failure, while others - including members of his family - believed lung failure from the flame inhalation was responsible and the attending physician suggested contaminated plasma may have contributed to his death[[/note]] |
| 44 | ** As for the rest of the race, after over an hour's cleanup the race resumed. Over the next 40 laps, the number of cars running dropped to 11 (among them, both Al Unser - the leader at the time of Savage's crash - and brother Bobby and A.J. Foyt - who took over as a relief driver when George Snider dropped out following the crash) and the race became a battle between Gordon Johncock (a teammate of Savage) and Bill Vukovich II (whose father Bill, was the Indianapolis 500 winner in 1953 and 1954 before being killed in a crash during the 1955 race) as it became evident that it was unlikely the race would make it the full distance. And as it happened, rain began again on Lap 129 (28 laps past the halfway point, upon which a race would be considered official) to trigger a caution before the rain became much heavier on Lap 133, forcing the Indianapolis 500 to come to an end at last with Gordon Johncock winning. Eventually, the victory banquet was canceled, and Johncock - after he and team owner Pat Patrick visited Swede Savage in the hospital - ended with an impromptu victory dinner at a nearby Burger Chef.[[note]]Johncock would not get to have an official victory celebration until 2023; when he and his family and surviving members of his winning crew from both 1973 and 1982 were given a tour of the oval along with a [[SugarWiki/HeartwarmingMoments victory banquet at a local restaurant]][[/note]] |
| 45 | [[/folder]] |
| 46 | |
| 47 | [[folder:FIFA World Cup]] |
| 48 | * The 1962 FIFA World Cup in Chile had the misfortune to be scheduled [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1960_Valdivia_earthquake shortly after one of the most powerful earthquakes ever recorded slammed the country,]] leaving the country scrambling to rebuild the necessary infrastructure in time and forcing them to cut the number of host cities in half. |
| 49 | * The hosting of the 1986 FIFA World Cup was originally awarded to Colombia, but they were forced to bail out in 1983 due to infrastructure issues that they didn't believe they could resolve in time. As Mexico had most of their infrastructure from the 1970 World Cup still in place, they were hastily designated the replacement hosts, only for a repeat of the lead-in to the 1962 World Cup when [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1985_Mexico_City_earthquake a massive earthquake hit Mexico City]]. |
| 50 | * The 2014 [[UsefulNotes/TheWorldCup World Cup]] in UsefulNotes/{{Brazil}} was such a clusterfuck that it was amazing the government of Dilma Rousseff won a re-election despite the backlash against its handling of the games. |
| 51 | ** Massive protests occurred in the year before the World Cup, largely out of the perception that public funds going to the games were being misused, wasted on corruption, and could be better used elsewhere. Brazilian footballer Romário referred to the Cup as the "biggest theft in history", claiming that its real cost was as much as US$46 billion and alleging massive corruption on the part of both FIFA and the Brazilian government. It was for this reason that no speeches were given at the opening ceremony, as is customary. When Rousseff did attend the final and delivered the Cup to the winning Germans, she received loud boos and jeering. |
| 52 | ** Not only were key facilities like hotels and even stadia still unfinished at the start of the games, but the removal of (mostly indigenous) people from their homes to build such facilities was another point of contention. |
| 53 | ** In 2003, Brazil had prohibited alcohol sales at stadiums in response to a number of alcohol-related deaths during football matches. It repealed this law, under heavy pressure from FIFA, with what became known as the "Budweiser Bill" after one of the World Cup's main sponsors. |
| 54 | ** The scariest part? This happened all over again at the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro. Stadiums and infrastructure fell behind schedule, and the political situation wasn't much better, with an impeachment process temporarily driving Rousseff away from office. But like with the Cup, the Games themselves went mostly well. |
| 55 | * The 2018 FIFA World Cup in Russia saw its budget cut a few times, but the only uproar regards [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_2018_FIFA_World_Cup_controversies how controversial the Russian government is]]. Granted, the games went pretty smoothly. The following World Cup however.... |
| 56 | * The 2022 World Cup in Qatar [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_2022_FIFA_World_Cup_controversies was questioned from the get-go]] and riddled with controversies left and right. It went down as one of the most mismanaged events in the history of world sports, with everyone involved being accused of corruption. Time will tell what will happen next. |
| 57 | ** First off, the choice of Qatar as the host was met with a lot of scrutiny, due to the fact that it barely had a strong football culture and the fact that summertime over there is SCORCHING hot. In order to counteract this, the dates were moved to November and December of 2022 instead of the usual summer times. |
| 58 | ** Things got worse in 2018 when disgraced FIFA president Sepp Blatter claimed that "black ops" were used for Qatar's host selection, with various bribes being uncovered from Qatari donors. This lead to accusations of sportswashing against the country. |
| 59 | ** A 2013 investigation by ''The Guardian'' claimed that many workers were denied food and water, had their identity papers taken away from them, compelled to forced labor, and that they were not paid on time or at all, making some of them effectively slaves. By the time that the games started, it was stated that an estimated ''6,000 workers'' died. |
| 60 | ** Another obstacle came in the way regarding the Russian team's chance of playing. Due to the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Sweden, Poland, and Czech Republic announced that they would not be participating in the games if Russia was involved. FIFA decided to respond by banning Russia from trying out, a decision that received a lot of both praise and condemnation. |
| 61 | ** The culture clash between Qatar and the Western world became one of the most hotly contested points. Despite welcoming people all around the world, the Islamic culture of Qatar disavowed LGBT, feminist, or Jewish fans from openly expressing or supporting their beliefs. This resulted in many fans getting kicked out or even detained for expressing their beliefs, which included support for LGBT rights, feminist movements (Iranian movements became the most notable), and Jewish prayers. Things also didn't help when Qatar banned alcohol from being sold, resulting in a lot of irate fans. |
| 62 | ** The statement that Qatar had a strong football culture aged like milk when their national football team got eliminated first in the competition after two bad matches against Senegal and Ecuador. |
| 63 | [[/folder]] |
| 64 | |
| 65 | [[folder:Olympic Games]] |
| 66 | The modern UsefulNotes/OlympicGames are one of the largest sporting events in the world, with cities competing to host them in order to take advantage of the glamour and tourism revenue that they attract. However, once awarded, the cities usually have to foot the bill themselves. Sometimes they go off swimmingly; others... not so much. |
| 67 | |
| 68 | * UsefulNotes/StLouis, 1904. ''Website/{{Cracked}}'' referred to it as [[http://www.cracked.com/blog/6-ways-1904-olympics-were-craziest-event-ever-held_p2/ "the Craziest Event Ever Held"]], and it's hard to argue. |
| 69 | ** The fact that the Games were held in the center of the US rather than in western Europe or even on the East Coast, at a time when the Wright Brothers' flight at Kitty Hawk was only 8 months prior, and anything resembling a modern passenger airline service was still decades away, meant that most European countries could only send a few athletes, if any. The result was a clean sweep by US athletes - 526 of the 651 people competing were doing so under the US flag, and 49 of the 94 events had only Americans in them. |
| 70 | ** Furthermore, the Games were originally scheduled to be held in UsefulNotes/{{Chicago}}, but a combination of campaigning by President UsefulNotes/TheodoreRoosevelt and the fact that Chicago was woefully unprepared to host the Games forced the IOC to move the event to St. Louis, which ''was'' prepared... to host the World's Fair that same summer. The organizers of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition were strongly opposed to having to compete with the Olympics, to the point of threatening to create their own athletic competition. |
| 71 | ** The opening ceremony was a very low-key affair, with only the US team and a few foreign athletes in attendance. Instead of only a week, it took nearly ''five months'' to run all 94 events. |
| 72 | ** The men's marathon event, as covered in [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M4AhABManTw this video]] by Creator/JonBois, was a poorly organized and officiated affair. Olympic organizer James E. Sullivan purposely provided only one official source of water 11 miles into the 25-mile route to test his theories of [[MadScientist how far purposeful dehydration could be taken]]. Combined with the hot temperatures (90°F/32°C), unpaved roads, and a lack of traffic maintenance, three athletes nearly lost their lives during the marathon: William Garcia was found lying on the road with his stomach shredded by breathing in clouds of dust from passing cars, Andarín Carvajal stopped to eat apples along the route and found out the hard way that they were rotten[[note]](despite taking a nap to sleep off the sickness, he still managed to finish in fourth place)[[/note]], and Thomas Hicks[[note]](who was declared winner after Fred Lorz was disqualified for taking a car for over half the route)[[/note]], was given '''[[WorstAid rat poison and brandy]]''' in place of water by his trainers following him. Hicks had to be carried across the finish line by his team, and likely would have died there if not for doctors giving him prompt medical attention. Len Taunyane (who eventually placed ninth) was also chased nearly a mile off-course by wild dogs. |
| 73 | ** In the end, the marathon holds the worst ratio of entrants to finishers with only 14 of 32 finishing, and by far the slowest winning time at 3 hours, 28 minutes and 45 seconds. |
| 74 | * UsefulNotes/{{London}}, 1908: |
| 75 | ** These were originally scheduled to be held in UsefulNotes/{{Rome}}, but the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 1906 drained UsefulNotes/{{Italy}}'s Olympic fund as they (wisely) opted to spend that money on relief efforts and reconstruction in Naples instead. |
| 76 | ** Despite having to be organized on little notice, the newly-rescheduled London games went off with barely a hitch, save for when Ralph Rose, the American flag bearer, refused to dip the American flag to King Edward VII during the opening ceremony; his teammate Martin Sheridan is apocryphally quoted as saying [[PatrioticFervor "this flag dips to no earthly king"]] (a quote that was actually first attributed to him in TheFifties). Most of the US team, Sheridan included, was composed of [[UsefulNotes/TheIrishDiaspora Irish Americans]] who eagerly supported Rose's move, leading to acrimony with the British judges. |
| 77 | * The 1916, 1940, and 1944 Olympics are notable for being the only Olympic Games to ever be outright canceled, all of them on account of the [[UsefulNotes/WorldWarI World]] [[UsefulNotes/WorldWarII Wars]]. All of the host cities were in nations that were among the war's combatants - the 1916 Olympics were to be held in [[UsefulNotes/ImperialGermany Berlin]], the 1940 Olympics in [[UsefulNotes/ImperialJapan Japan]] (the Summer Games in UsefulNotes/{{Tokyo}}, the Winter Games in Sapporo), the 1944 Summer Olympics in UsefulNotes/{{London}}, and the 1944 Winter Olympics in [[UsefulNotes/FascistItaly Cortina d'Ampezzo, Italy]]. |
| 78 | ** After Japan forfeited the 1940 Olympics in 1938 on account of the outbreak of the UsefulNotes/SecondSinoJapaneseWar, the International Olympic Committee tried, and failed, three times to salvage them. For the Winter Games, they initially offered them to St. Moritz in neutral UsefulNotes/{{Switzerland}}, but disputes with the Swiss organizing committee prevented that from happening. They thought they finally found a host city in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, [[UsefulNotes/NaziGermany Germany]], which had hosted the Winter Games in 1936... only for [[UsefulNotes/WorldWarII Germany to invade Poland]]. As for the Summer Games, the IOC did successfully relocate them to [[UsefulNotes/{{Finland}} Helsinki]], but the Soviet Union's invasion of Finland combined with the declarations of war by both Britain and France forced them to cancel it. With the resulting war still raging in 1944, the IOC didn't even bother to save the Olympics that year. |
| 79 | ** Fortunately, all of the host cities that saw their Olympics canceled for WWII would get a chance to host them again after the war's end. St. Moritz hosted the first post-war Olympics with the 1948 Winter Games, London followed right after with the Summer Games that same year, Helsinki hosted the Summer Olympics in 1952, Cortina d'Ampezzo hosted the 1956 Winter Olympics, Tokyo hosted the 1964 Summer Games, and Sapporo hosted the 1972 Winter Olympics. Three of these cities have since received a second Olympics: London hosted the 2012 Summer Games, Tokyo hosted the 2020 Summer Games (albeit in 2021 due to COVID-19; see Multiple Sports above), and Cortina d'Ampezzo will co-host the 2026 Winter Games alongside Milan. |
| 80 | * UsefulNotes/{{Munich}}, 1972. The kidnapping and murder of eleven Israeli athletes by [[UsefulNotes/ArabIsraeliConflict Palestinian gunmen]] was one of the grislier events on this list, and would be dramatized in the film ''Film/{{Munich}}''. The disaster forced the West German government to seriously re-examine its anti-terrorism procedures, especially after the botched rescue attempt that saw the athletes get killed. |
| 81 | * UsefulNotes/{{Denver}}, Colorado... [[VerbalBackspace wait]], make that [[UsefulNotes/{{Austria}} Innsbruck]], 1976: |
| 82 | ** With a slick presentation that lowballed costs and [[RemovedFromThePicture literally airbrushed out brown spots from photos of the Rockies]], the Mile-High City beat out [[UsefulNotes/{{Switzerland}} Sion, Switzerland]], [[UsefulNotes/{{Finland}} Tampere, Finland]], and [[UsefulNotes/{{Vancouver}} Vancouver, Canada]] for the XII Winter Olympics in 1970. However, [[SurprisinglyRealisticOutcome as the estimated cost for the games tripled and concerns about environmental and civic disruption increased]], public discontent mushroomed. |
| 83 | ** An anti-Olympics movement within the Colorado state legislature itself emerged, and on November 7, 1972, 59% of state voters rejected a crucial bond issue to finance the Games with public funds. Eight days later, Denver was forced to withdraw from its hosting duties. |
| 84 | ** The IOC offered the job to Whistler (just outside of Vancouver), but they declined. Salt Lake City then offered to host, but pulled out (further enraging the IOC) in 1973 when they were told by the US government they would get no federal funding. [[note]](Ironically, both they and Whistler would later have successful Winter Olympics bids of their own, SLC on its own in 2002 and Whistler as part of UsefulNotes/{{Vancouver}}'s 2010 bid.)[[/note]] As a last resort, Innsbruck (the site of the 1964 Winter Olympics) stepped in and put together a successful (albeit not terribly fancy) Games with the infrastructure from their previous effort. |
| 85 | * UsefulNotes/{{Montreal}}, 1976: |
| 86 | ** The Summer Games left Montreal so badly in debt that the financing for the Olympic Stadium wasn't paid off in full until 30 years later, and the province of UsefulNotes/{{Quebec}} insisted that the city pay off its own debts. The financial situation was so bad all around that the future of the Olympic Games was in serious doubt. |
| 87 | ** On top of that, most sovereign African countries boycotted the Games because the IOC would not suspend New Zealand following its UsefulNotes/{{rugby|Union}} team's tour of South Africa (which was banned by the IOC at the time due to its [[UsefulNotes/TheApartheidEra apartheid]] laws). [[note]](At the time, rugby had been outside the Olympic program for more than 50 years, and would not return to the Games until 2016, this time in its abbreviated sevens variant. By that time, apartheid had been dead and gone for more than 20 years.)[[/note]] |
| 88 | * The 1980 UsefulNotes/{{Moscow}} and 1984 UsefulNotes/LosAngeles games were marred by the tit-for-tat withdrawals of the US and Soviet delegations respectively. The United States pulled its team from Moscow 1980 over the UsefulNotes/SovietInvasionOfAfghanistan, while the Soviet Union pulled ''its'' team from Los Angeles 1984 in response; many of their respective allies did the same. The perceived politicization of the Olympics was [[TheMoralSubstitute responsible for the creation]] of the Goodwill Games by Ted Turner in 1986. |
| 89 | ** The 1980 withdrawal also had ramifications at Creator/{{NBC}}, which (in the midst of their Fred Silverman-induced doldrums) had pretty much bet the farm on Olympic programming that year... and found itself broadcasting an event that Americans, without the home team to root for, couldn't care less about. The network did a grudging ClipShow to keep those who couldn't care less about politics happy, and they took a '''huge''' loss. |
| 90 | ** The 1984 withdrawal also had ramifications for UsefulNotes/McDonalds, as [[http://www.cracked.com/article_19334_the-5-biggest-disasters-in-history-marketing-ideas.html Cracked reports]]. The restaurant ran an "If the U.S. wins, you win!" promotion where customers were given a scratch card with an Olympic event on it; if the US won a medal in that event, the customer would get a free Big Mac (for gold), fries (for silver), or drink (for bronze). With the Soviet Union and their allies (the US' biggest rivals) boycotting the games, this led to the American team winning a '''lot''' more medals than they would have otherwise, including more than twice as many gold medals as they did in 1976 (83 in '84 compared to 34 competing against Russia in '76), and [=McDonald's=] had to give away a '''lot''' of valuable Big Macs for free, to the point where many stores were reporting running out of them. ''WesternAnimation/TheSimpsons'' would later parody this incident in the episode [[Recap/TheSimpsonsS4E10LisasFirstWord "Lisa's First Word"]], where Krusty tries the same thing and later threatens to spit in every 50th burger. |
| 91 | * UsefulNotes/{{Seoul}}, 1988: |
| 92 | ** While the Games themselves went off without a hitch from a non-political standpoint, they [[GoneHorriblyWrong went horribly wrong]] for the ruling dictatorship of South Korea. President Chun Doo-hwan intended for the Games to act as a showcase of South Korea's booming industrial economy, legitimize his authoritarian regime, and stave off growing pro-democratic pressure. Instead, the job of hosting the Olympics tied the government's hands when it came to putting down protesters, as it found out when a mass uprising swept the country in June 1987. Rather than crack down hard (and make South Korea look like a BananaRepublic just as the eyes of the world were focused on it), Chun gave in and oversaw constitutional reforms that established democracy and human rights protections and granted amnesty to political prisoners. South Korea's first democratically-elected President, Roh Tae-woo, officially opened the Games less than a year after taking office. |
| 93 | ** And of course, as was the case with every Olympiad in TheEighties, Cold War politics became an issue. The IOC fought hard to avoid a repeat of the boycotts of 1980 and 1984 — difficult given that, as mentioned, South Korea at the time was a dictatorship with a pretty bad human rights record. Furthermore, there was the issue of UsefulNotes/NorthKorea. They came up with their own plan for the Games, which was eagerly supported by UsefulNotes/FidelCastro; it called for a joint organizing committee, two separate opening and closing ceremonies in Pyongyang and Seoul, and for the events to be roughly evenly divided between North and South Korea. When the plan was rejected, North Korea and Cuba attempted to lead another boycott of the Games, but this time only Nicaragua, Ethiopia, Albania, the Seychelles, and Madagascar followed them. |
| 94 | * UsefulNotes/{{Atlanta}}, 1996: |
| 95 | ** To start with, Atlanta's selection to host the Games was a controversial DarkHorseVictory, especially given that this was [[MilestoneCelebration the 100th anniversary of the modern Olympics]]. Ironically, that was likely the reason why UsefulNotes/{{Athens}}, the logical choice for the centennial celebration, ''wasn't'' selected for it: the organizers of that city's bid arrogantly told the IOC that Athens was entitled to it by "historical right due to its history", infuriating many delegates. Even so, with UsefulNotes/{{Toronto}} and UsefulNotes/{{Melbourne}} as its main rivals, Atlanta's selection came as a surprise. Many people saw Atlanta as a second-tier city that was selected chiefly for BoringButPractical reasons like infrastructure, associated more with commerce than with culture or sport. A tourism guide that the city put out for the Games gained infamy when it recommended [[KitschyThemedRestaurant Olive Garden]] to people looking for the best Italian food in the city. Furthermore, while the city's boosters were eager to promote an image of a modern Southern city that had moved beyond the racial tensions of the past, the idea of Atlanta hosting the Games naturally led to a lot of DeepSouth jokes about mud wrestling and tractor pulling becoming Olympic events. One enterprising Southerner named Mac Davis, the manager of the CountryMusic station WQYZ in Dublin, Georgia, took these jokes and ran with them by hosting a tongue-in-cheek "Redneck Games" to coincide with the Olympics. Likewise, stand-up comedian Creator/JeffFoxworthy (who is from Atlanta) made a whole routine about the then-upcoming Games, including saying "God, you know we're gonna screw this up". |
| 96 | ** Like Munich, the Atlanta Games were also the site of [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centennial_Olympic_Park_bombing a terrorist attack]], this one a pipe bombing by a RightWingMilitiaFanatic named Eric Rudolph that killed two people and injured 111 more. |
| 97 | ** Aside from the bombing, the Games were also criticized by European Olympic officials as being overly commercialized and garish, with an overcrowded Olympic Village and poor-quality food and transportation. Notably, IOC President Juan Antonio Samaranch declined to refer to the Atlanta Games as "the best Olympics ever", as was his usual tradition, instead calling them "most exceptional". |
| 98 | ** However, the Atlanta Games ''were'' successful in one very important respect. Namely, they turned a healthy profit, precisely because of those TV and sponsorship deals, and the infrastructure built to support them led to a revitalization of Atlanta's downtown. (Most, if not all, of that infrastructure is still in use today.) Today, despite the aforementioned criticism, the 1996 Summer Olympics, together with the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles, are often held up as examples of how to organize the Olympics without going over budget and crippling the host city with debt. |
| 99 | * UsefulNotes/{{Sydney}}, 2000. In an event-specific example, the technicians who set up the equipment for the women's gymnastics all-around final somehow set the vaulting horse to the wrong height, 5 centimeters (2 inches) lower than the regulation height, causing many gymnasts to fall. The error was discovered, but not until a full half of the competitors had already vaulted, and the news didn't make its way to everyone until well into the third rotation, by which point the loss of confidence had already caused a number of mistakes on subsequent events that knocked those athletes out of medal contention (not to mention that one gymnast was injured and could not finish the competition); the gymnasts who vaulted on the improperly-set horse were offered do-overs on vault, but their scores on the other events had to stand. To this day, many fans feel that the actions were insufficient and that officials should have stopped the competition completely and done a full do-over at some later point, rather than pushing forward with a competition already affected in countless ways by the error. |
| 100 | * [[UsefulNotes/{{Utah}} Salt Lake City]], 2002. The events were marred from the start by a scandal that broke in 1998, in which representatives for the Salt Lake Organizing Committee were accused of bribing the International Olympic Committee to award them the Games, including paying for the private schooling of one IOC member's child. While all parties were acquitted, this wasn't the only problem facing the SLOC, which was short some $379 million and needed to desperately make up the difference in order to have the money to build the required facilities. Venture capitalist UsefulNotes/MittRomney — the future governor of Massachusetts, Presidential candidate in 2012, and now Senator from Utah — made his name here by turning the Games around in record time after being brought in to head the SLOC; aside from a judging controversy, no events marred the Games themselves. |
| 101 | * UsefulNotes/{{Athens}}, 2004. Construction was severely behind schedule, with key facilities like the tram system and the Olympic Stadium itself only being finished less than two months before the start of the Games. The design for the Aquatics Center had to be greatly scaled back (by deciding not to install a roof) in order to have it completed on time. The 2004 Summer Games would later become mainly known for two things: being so expensive that it was a major contributor to the ''entire country of Greece'' nearly going bankrupt, and for the massive amounts of Olympic venues that were abandoned and left to rot after the games because the people of Athens have no use for them. |
| 102 | * UsefulNotes/{{Beijing}}, 2008. The UsefulNotes/{{Chin|a}}ese government went out of its way to prevent a troubled production, issuing new etiquette guidelines for the Beijing police, foiling a terrorist plot by Uighur separatists, and undertaking a massive anti-pollution campaign to ensure that the city's famously smoggy skies would be clear for the Games (several athletes had chosen to train overseas for this reason, only showing up in Beijing when they actually had to perform). However, controversies still popped up - the opening ceremony was marred by the revelation that the singer they had perform "Ode to the Motherland" had been lip-syncing, there were questions surrounding the age of some of the Chinese gymnasts, and despite the government's best efforts, there were still pollution problems, with some athletes pulling out of events due to poor air quality. This was on top of calls for boycotts of the Games due to China's human rights issues. |
| 103 | * UsefulNotes/{{Vancouver}}, 2010. UsefulNotes/{{Georgia|Caucasus}}n luger Nodar Kumaritashvili was killed during a training run, raising concerns over the safety of the luge course. [[note]]As a preventive measure, the walls at the exit of the curve where Nodar was killed were raised, and the ice profile was adjusted. The start of the men's luge was moved down track to the women's starting point, to reduce speed, while the start of the women's luge was also moved farther down the track accordingly.[[/note]] Also, since an El Niño event was going on, the Games often found themselves chronically short of snow due to the abnormally warm weather; snow had to be trucked in from higher in the mountains. |
| 104 | * London, 2012: |
| 105 | ** The Games themselves were an overall success and actually turned a small profit, but the run-up was marred by scandal as the IOC was given free rein to turn the city into its personal fiefdom: Special traffic lanes for Olympic athletes, [[http://gawker.com/5913175/behold-the-london-olympics-creepy-brand-exclusion-zone ridiculously aggressive trademark enforcement]], and the apparent suspension of local anti-competitive behavior laws did ''not'' endear the Olympics to many sectors of the press, the zenith — or nadir — of the absurdity coming when UsefulNotes/McDonalds were given an exclusive monopoly license to sell ''chips'' anywhere within Olympic venues. It was also about this time that serious public attention was focused on the steadily-escalating cost of the Games and the questionable long-term benefits. |
| 106 | ** These games also suffered a scandal when the company contracted to provide security, G4, ended up having far too little staff to necessary for such an event. As a result, the army had to be drafted in at short notice. |
| 107 | * [[UsefulNotes/{{Russia}} Sochi]], 2014. Intended by UsefulNotes/VladimirPutin as a showcase of Russian prosperity, Sochi instead came to be seen as a debacle well before the events kicked off. |
| 108 | ** The Games were marred by corruption scandals from top to bottom, to the point where it would be easier to list the instances where such accusations ''weren't'' happening. Sochi 2014 cost more than $50 billion, more than every other Winter Olympic Games put together, and it was said that at least a third of that money was lost due to corruption. |
| 109 | ** The Games began just as Russia became embroiled in controversy over a harsh new anti-LGBT law purporting to crack down on promoting "non-traditional sexual relationships" to minors. While no countries outright boycotted the Games, there was passive-aggressive opposition from many quarters — the German Olympic team wore rainbow-colored uniforms, the US sent a delegation of three openly-gay athletes (in place of UsefulNotes/BarackObama, who declined to attend; although the Winter Olympics' opening ceremony is not considered a "must-visit" for most major politicians), and Website/{{Google}} put up an Olympic-themed Doodle that doubled as a statement of support for LGBT rights. On top of this, there were also protests by Circassian nationalists demanding a state apology from the Russian government over the ethnic cleansing of Circassians that had gone on in the region 150 years prior. |
| 110 | ** Fear of terrorism ran high, especially following a number of high-profile bombings in Russia by terrorists from the region in the months before the Games. |
| 111 | ** There were complaints over the safety of the slopestyle course, with Shaun White and others refusing to ride it after one snowboarder was seriously injured on it during practice. Last-minute changes had to be made to it. |
| 112 | ** The difficulties with venues were, to some, exacerbated by unseasonable warm temperatures that made the Sochi games the warmest Winter Games ''ever''. While part of Russia's marketing for the Games had been that they would be the first Winter Games where [[http://www.cbsnews.com/news/warm-weather-causing-problems-for-outdoor-sports-at-the-sochi-winter-olympic-games/ it would be possible for one to lounge on a beach between events]] held in the mountains where there would be no shortage of the snow everyone expects a Russian winter to abound in [[note]]Sochi is, in fact, one of the few areas of Russia that has average temperatures above freezing at that time of year[[/note]], they certainly didn't expect it to be so warm that a BBC reporter could cover a ski-jumping event wearing ''shorts'' because it was close to 15°C (around 60°F). Needless to say, this led to more complaints. |
| 113 | ** Key facilities were still unfinished on the eve of the opening ceremony. "[=#SochiFail=]" became a popular Website/{{Twitter}} hashtag among people attending the Olympics and photographing the conditions at the hotels, which often included broken light fixtures, blinds, and door locks; communal toilets; Spartan furnishings in hotel rooms; and tap water that was unsafe to drink. |
| 114 | ** There are also the jaw-dropping reports that people were actually getting stuck in places. American bobsledder Johnny Quinn found himself stuck first in a bathroom, forcing him to ''break apart the door'' to escape, only to get stuck ''in an elevator'' two days later. |
| 115 | ** In the end, what little international goodwill Russia elicited from the Games evaporated when, just one week after the closing ceremony, Russia annexed the Ukrainian peninsula of Crimea and invaded eastern Ukraine. Indeed, the Games were so bad that [[http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/monkey-cage/wp/2014/03/26/crimea-putins-olympic-diversion/ some commentators]] even suggested that the invasion was done, at least in part, to try and salvage Russian pride after the humiliating debacle that was Sochi. |
| 116 | ** It emerged afterwards that Russia presided over a state-run doping program involving corrupt anti-doping officials, intelligence agents, and dozens of athletes including members of the cross-country ski team and two medal-winning bobsledders. The doping program allowed Russian athletes (who had previously performed poorly in Vancouver) to outperform their American rivals and win the most medals at Sochi. The pervasiveness of the doping program and Russia's refusal to cooperate with the World Anti-Doping Agency led to Russia's track and field team being banned from the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro. The IOC nearly went one step further by completely banning the Russian delegation from the 2016 games, but decided instead to let each sport's governing body decide if certain Russian athletes could participate while banning any Russian athlete with a prior doping sanction (though Russia was banned from the Rio Paralympics). As a result, of the original lineup of 387 Russian delegates, only 272 were approved to participate, with most of the banned athletes outside of the aforementioned track and field team being weightlifters and rowers. For the 2018 Winter Olympics, the Russian Olympic Committee was suspended in December 2017 due to the doping scandal. Athletes who had no previous drug violations and a consistent history of drug testing were to be allowed to compete under the Olympic Flag as an "Olympic Athlete from Russia" (OAR). Under the terms of the decree, Russian government officials were barred from the Games, and neither the country's flag nor anthem would be present. However, even this wasn't enough to gain compliance from Russia (two Russian athletes were ''still'' caught doping), to the point that in December 2019 the World Anti-Doping Agency ultimately decided to bring down the hammer and ban Russia from major international sporting competitions, including the Olympics and World Cup, for four years. (While individual athletes from Russia were allowed to compete under a neutral flag, teams were banned from the Tokyo games.) |
| 117 | * UsefulNotes/RioDeJaneiro, 2016. While some of the infrastructure was ready by the time Rio was a venue for UsefulNotes/TheWorldCup two years prior, buildings getting overpriced and/or behind schedule were tragically common. Brazil getting hit by an economic recession, a drought in Rio's region, Dilma Rousseff's impeachment, a Zika virus outbreak (and graphic photos of babies suffering from microcephaly), and constant reminders that the water around Rio is highly polluted did not help matters. The IOC even held meetings with UsefulNotes/{{Madrid}} authorities in case the Spanish capital needed to take over. |
| 118 | ** Less than a week before the start of the Games, athletes arrived to find the Olympic Village in "uninhabitable" conditions. The Australian team was confronted with blocked toilets, leaking pipes, puddles near exposed wiring, darkened stairwells, and filthy floors, causing them to stay at nearby hotels. The team eventually moved back in, only to be evacuated by a small fire in the building. As of a week before the opening ceremony, only 12 of the 31 buildings in the Village passed safety inspections. |
| 119 | ** The private firm handling security at the Games was fired for "incompetence and irresponsibility", causing Rio and the IOC to scramble to beef up security. |
| 120 | ** Once the Games started, there were less problems than expected, even leading the naysaying international reporters to admit things went well. Things that ''did'' go awry included catering (the food wasn't enough, forcing food trucks to be brought or security to allow viewers to buy what they wanted outside; to make it worse, buyers were subject to huge lines and abusive prices), [[http://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-olympics-rio-diving-pool-idUKKCN10O0UW a pool that went green]], a camera that fell, a bus full of reporters whose glass was broken, a scalping scandal that even led to an IOC executive being arrested, and a few events that were postponed due to rain and/or wind. |
| 121 | *** The cycling road race was a massive subject of contention. There were three different routes (for the men's, women's, and Paralympic races), and all three failed safety checks before the Games even began. The Brazilians took some measures, which was mostly sticking mesh to trees, and nobody was satisfied. In the men's race, over a dozen cyclists ended up in the hospital and everyone got itchy. Then the women raced, and one of the cyclists expected to medal spun into the gutter and broke her neck. She began recovery very quickly, but not after outrage — in particular, GB commentator and former athlete Chris Boardman ripping his microphone off and leaving the studio to find the nearest BBC camera crew and ranting on and on. Come the Paralympics and an Iranian cyclist came off on the downhill and broke his neck in the same way as the Dutch woman, and suffered a fatal heart attack as a result. |
| 122 | ** One thing that ''didn't'' pose a problem, however, was Rio's infamously high crime rates. Instead, the world got the bizarre moment when Ryan Lochte and three other members of the US swim team claimed that they had been robbed at gunpoint at a gas station by criminals posing as police, seemingly confirming fears about crime in Rio posing a threat to security... that is, until it turned out that they had in fact been lawfully removed from the premises by armed security because they had trashed the gas station's bathroom. Lochte lost four major sponsorships in the aftermath of the incident, while one of the other swimmers, Jimmy Feigen, was fined $10,800. |
| 123 | ** The Paralympics became one too, given the revelation of budgetary issues that popped up with just under one month to go. |
| 124 | ** The problems didn't even end with the Games, as the medals were made more cheaply than usual, and in less than a year many of them had started to fall apart. The IOC had to then promise to replace all of the more than 2,000 faulty medals. |
| 125 | * The attempt by UsefulNotes/{{Boston}} to host the 2024 Summer Olympics [[http://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2015/08/18/boston-olympics-report-real-risks-bid-officials-say/U0664w7BMeTVCMtY3mSXbO/story.html was full of problems]], and proves that you don't even have to ''win'' hosting the Games to have trouble with the Olympics. |
| 126 | ** Between the half-formed and outright stupid proposals (such as building an athlete's village in {{Southie|s}}, when even a cursory knowledge of the neighborhood's history tells you why that's a bad idea), they were also dealing with terrible timing. The bid was unfolding while memory of the worst winter on record was still fresh in everyone's minds. Said winter saw the already-aging transportation system grind to a screeching halt, leaving very glaring questions about how the city was going to handle a massive influx of people for the Olympics. |
| 127 | ** Add to that a history of city officials pitching grandiose projects like the Big Dig that go horrifically over budget and time (see the "Other" page), and there was skepticism and outright scorn towards Boston 2024 from the start. This was not helped by attempts by the city to make it appear the idea had more support than it did, which got them accused of {{Astro Turf}}ing, including using plants at community meetings to intimidate the opposition and a ban on city employees publicly criticizing the bid. |
| 128 | ** While no one would admit this out loud, the Boston Marathon bombing in 2013 that killed three people and injured hundreds of others (including causing 17 people to lose limbs) had made the city weary about hosting another really big sporting event. It doesn't help that it would also be TemptingFate within the history of the Games themselves, since the previous Summer Olympics held in America — Atlanta in 1996 — also had a deadly bombing attack. |
| 129 | ** Because of all of the above and more, public opinion in Boston was staunchly against hosting the Olympic Games. The people in charge of the bid fought tooth and nail to prevent the public from voting on anything related to the Olympics, since they knew a public vote would be the end of it. The bid was eventually dropped by Boston mayor Marty Walsh after the IOC tried to rush him into signing an agreement. While Walsh dropped it ostensibly because the IOC wasn't able to guarantee insurance for the taxpayer dollars that would inevitably go into hosting the Games, it's pretty much universally believed that Walsh actually pulled back because he knew that he was never going to have the support he needed from the general public, and continuing to back the bid would hurt his chances of reelection. |
| 130 | * Related to the above: Thanks to the rising costs of hosting the Olympics, much like the bid for 2022, many prospective hosts besides Boston withdrew their bids for 2024. Then when the IOC narrowed down the candidates, three of them ended up withdrawing anyway, either due to costs or because referendums voted against the bid. In the end, only two cities — Paris and Los Angeles — bid for the 2024 Games, and it was decided that whoever lost the bid for 2024 (which ended up being Los Angeles) would get to host the 2028 Olympics instead — because the IOC was afraid ''no one'' would bid for 2028. |
| 131 | * The 2018 Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang, UsefulNotes/SouthKorea got off to a tricky start as their neighbors to the north had recently been making noise about [[UsefulNotes/TheHoovesOfChollima nuclear war]]. Then when athletes began arriving, they were met with brutally cold temperatures, enough that many skis were warped after just a single practice run and had to be thrown away. |
| 132 | ** The giant slalom alpine race was cancelled due to dangerous winds. Controversially ''not'' cancelled was the previous day's women's slopestyle, resulting in numerous accidents and only five of the 25 participants managing to finish. |
| 133 | ** After the above-mentioned Russian ban, ultimately over 100 athletes from the country who'd been found innocent of doping were allowed to compete under a neutral flag. However, things were still very tense between them and the other competitors, with reports that the American speed skating team refused to so much as talk to them. Then two of them were discovered to be doping this time around, one of whom was stripped of his speed skating bronze medal, while the other had been parading around in a shirt that said [[SuspiciouslySpecificDenial "I don't do doping."]] This also cost the Russian athletes the chance of entering the closing ceremony under their own flag, as the IOC had considered relenting until the dopers were caught. |
| 134 | ** The British skeleton uniforms were accused of being illegal by former champion Katie Uhlaender due to aerodynamic ridges, though the team maintained that they passed all inspections. |
| 135 | ** The bizarre saga of Elizabeth Swaney, a thoroughly average skier from America who was able to get onto the Hungarian team through severe LoopholeAbuse, after previous attempts at Sochi. In an Olympics already swimming in controversies, this is easily the strangest as both participants and viewers are sharply divided over whether she's a disgrace to the Games or a [[Film/{{Rudy}} Rudy Ruettiger]]-esque inspiration for being such a {{determinator}}. Though she certainly didn't help her case with her entitled behavior after her near-trickless run didn't get her into the finals. |
| 136 | * The 2020 Summer Olympics in Tokyo suffered from construction cost overruns and later a public health disaster caused by the UsefulNotes/Covid19Pandemic. |
| 137 | ** From the beginning, much of the infrastructure experienced constant delays and cost overruns. Plans for the original 1964 stadium by architect Zaha Hadid were scrapped due to the $2 billion price tag, resulting in a new stadium by Kengo Kuma that cost $1.3 billion. Likewise, the planned Olympic Village ended up costing $2 billion. Further exacerbating the construction were Japan's social problems like its aging population and lack of natural resources, resulting in labor shortages and the costly imports of construction material. Overall, the total costs ballooned from $7.3 billion in 2013 to '''$26 billion''' in 2021. |
| 138 | ** Then just months before they were set to start, the Games got bumped back by a year due to the pandemic, marking the first time in the history of the Olympics that they were postponed (although as mentioned above they have been outright cancelled three times due to the World Wars). In January 2021, Japanese government officials were reported to have privately conceded that holding the Olympics at present would be next to impossible and considered hosting the Games in 2022, the next available year. |
| 139 | ** Then in Spring 2021, Japan experienced a massive wave of COVID cases and deaths. When combined with the poor vaccination rate and the nation's broken health care system, some health officials feared that the mass influx of foreign athletes into Tokyo would turn the Games into a potential superspreader event. Subsequently, many citizens and businesses called for the games to be cancelled, though the IOC and Japanese government refuted such demands. The Games marked the first time that foreign audiences and domestic spectators were barred from attending, which would clearly be an impediment to profit from ticket sales. |
| 140 | ** Just a week before the games started, it was reported that one COVID case popped up in the Olympic village, and the main composer of the Opening Ceremony had resigned due to past controversies involving bullying. The director of the Opening Ceremony was later fired when it was revealed he harbored racist and nationalistic political views. |
| 141 | * UsefulNotes/{{Beijing}}, 2022: |
| 142 | ** Over the two years following Sochi, largely due to public pressure from citizens about costs, a number of desirable locations in Europe withdrew their bids for the 2022 Winter Olympics... leaving only Beijing, China and Almaty, Kazakhstan, major cities in countries not known for their commitment to the kind of democracy that allows angry citizens to force governments to withdraw Olympic bids. The IOC's widely-ridiculed decision to award those Games to Beijing, which might under other circumstances have celebrated and been praised for being the first city ever to host both the Summer and Winter Games, was a last-ditch effort to [[FranchiseKiller save the Winter Games]], because at least they know the Chinese can do it however imperfectly.[[note]]And for the 2026 Winter Olympics, Italy split the venues between Milan and Cortina d'Ampezzo.[[/note]] |
| 143 | ** Relations between China and the international community had significantly worsened during the interim years — namely over the forced resettlement and detention of approximately one million Muslim Uyghurs in UsefulNotes/{{Xinjiang}}, repression of pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong, military threats towards Taiwan, and lingering diplomatic fallout from the UsefulNotes/COVID19Pandemic — leading to multiple calls for the Winter Games to be boycotted. |
| 144 | ** Those calls only intensified in November 2021 when Peng Shuai, a Chinese tennis player and former Olympian, disappeared after accusing a high-ranking Communist Party official, Zhang Gaoli, of sexual assault, resulting in an international firestorm. By December 8, the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada and Australia had announced they would engage in a diplomatic boycott of the Games, meaning that they would send their athletes to Beijing but political dignitaries would not be present,[[note]]They could not initiate a full boycott as had been done for Moscow 1980 due to recent changes to the Olympic Charter, which would effectively ban their athletes from competing in Paris if they pulled out completely.[[/note]] citing the Peng case among many. %% Chinese names are rendered family name first, so the accuser's family name is Peng. |
| 145 | [[/folder]] |
| 146 | |
| 147 | [[folder:National Football League]] |
| 148 | * UsefulNotes/SuperBowl XLV, the championship game of the 2010–11 NFL season. Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones wanted to use the game to showcase his team's brand-new $1.15 billion Cowboys Stadium (now known as AT&T Stadium), and to break the Super Bowl attendance record. However, the week in the run-up to the game was a comedy of errors. |
| 149 | ** On January 28, Cowboys Stadium was put on lockdown due to a suspicious package... which turned out to be a piece of debris. |
| 150 | ** A few days before the game, a freak snow storm blanketed the area, resulting in closure of local airports and several roads as well as brief power outages throughout the region. [[note]](As well as the paradox of the fact that the Winter Olympics in Canada didn't have snow, but the Super Bowl in Texas did.)[[/note]] In addition to everything else, this meant that the technicians who were supposed to be finishing the last-minute details couldn't get out to the site, costing them a day's work right at a critical point. |
| 151 | ** The Friday before the game, six people were injured by ice falling from the roof. As a result, on game day four of the 10 gates were closed, making it very difficult for fans to enter the stadium. |
| 152 | ** To help the chances of breaking the attendance record, Jones ordered the installation of 15,000 temporary seats. However, partly because of ice and snow storms in the area around the stadium, 1,250 of those seats weren't finished on game day. 850 of the fans who were to be in those seats were able to get seats elsewhere, but the other 400 were forced to go to a bar inside the stadium and watch the game on TV. They were refunded triple their ticket prices, but that still didn't take into account hotel, airfare, and other such expenses. Several fans ended up suing the NFL (the case was settled out of court). |
| 153 | ** At the end of the day, the Green Bay Packers defeated the Pittsburgh Steelers 31–25. And the total attendance was 103,219, only 766 short of the record. |
| 154 | * Two months before Super Bowl XLV, the Minnesota Vikings faced some weather-related challenges of their own when a massive storm dumped over 17 inches of snow on Minnesota's Twin Cities less than 24 hours before the scheduled kickoff time for the Vikings' Week 14 home game against the New York Giants. |
| 155 | ** First, the Vikings' stadium, known as the Metrodome, needed to be cleared of snow on the roof before it would be safe for players and fans. Crews initially attempted to begin the process on Saturday night, once the snow stopped falling, but high winds made it too unsafe for them to be working out there. The game was ultimately postponed from Sunday to Monday in order to allow time for snow-clearing efforts. |
| 156 | ** The Giants, meanwhile, ended up having to spend the night in Kansas City after their plane was diverted due to the Minneapolis-St. Paul airport shutting down. The postponement actually proved to be helpful to them, as they were not going to be able to arrive in Minnesota until just a few hours before the originally scheduled kickoff. |
| 157 | ** Early Sunday morning, the stadium demonstrated exactly why having the snow cleared was such a concern: the bubble roof gave out under the weight of the snow and collapsed. There were no deaths or injuries as the collapse happened at about 5:00 AM, so no one was on site yet. But there was no way to fix the roof in time and no suitable alternative in the Twin Cities, so the game was relocated to Detroit. |
| 158 | ** The biggest impact, however, reared its head in Week ''15''. With the Metrodome still out of commission, the NFL directed the team to play their final home game against the Chicago Bears at the University of Minnesota's TCF Bank Stadium[[labelnote:*]]now known as Huntington Bank Stadium as of 2021[[/labelnote]] - an ''outdoor'' stadium that was not designed for winter games[[note]]Keep in mind that the college football season ends in mid-November, before Minnesota's famously brutal winter shows up[[/note]]. Players expressed concerns about this, specifically mentioning the lack of any kind of heating system to thaw the turf; punter Chris Kluwe[[note]]you might recognize his name from his fiery defense of fellow player Brandon Ayanbadejo's pro-gay marriage comments a few years later[[/note]] flat-out stated that the ground was "hard as concrete" and posed a risk of concussions, but the NFL and coaches decided to go ahead with it anyway and chided Kluwe for talking about the conditions on social media. Kluwe's prediction ended up coming true as partway through the game, Vikings quarterback Brett Favre struck his head on the frozen turf and sustained what he would describe as the worst concussion he'd ever had[[note]]he reportedly asked his trainer why the Bears were there[[/note]], [[CareerEndingInjury bringing the Hall of Famer's legendary career to an end on a sour note]]. To date, no one has yet admitted that playing that game on that field might have been a mistake. |
| 159 | ** If anything good came from this debacle, however, it was that it it ''finally'' convinced the city of Minneapolis to replace the long-outdated Metrodome, an argument that had been ongoing since as early as the mid-'90s and nearly became a CreatorKiller for the Twins (who were nearly ''contracted'' by Major League Baseball due to their poor stadium situation until they built Target Field in 2010) and the Vikings (who would nearly move over the issue, with most rumors pegging them for Los Angeles); the Metrodome would subsequently be re-roofed with a new fabric for its' remaining 2 years of operation before being demolished to make room for the new US Bank Stadium on the same site. Ironically, the Vikings actually ended up back at TCF Bank Stadium for the 2014 and 2015 seasons while the new stadium was being built, but with much better advance preparation this time around (such as a new playing surface with heating coils), the team was able to take the necessary steps to keep the field safe for play even in the frigid Minnesota winter (most notably being able to withstand windchills of as low as –20 degrees Celsius during a Vikings playoff game in 2015). |
| 160 | * The 1967 NFL Championship Game between the Green Bay Packers and the [[UsefulNotes/DFWMetroplex Dallas]] Cowboys, popularly known as the Ice Bowl. Played on New Year's Eve in Green Bay, Wisconsin, the air temperature at kickoff was -15°F (-26°C), with wind chills as low as -48°F (-44°C). On top of that, the turf's heating malfunctioned and moisture from the tarpaulin flash-froze, with [[SlippySlideyIceWorld more and more of the field freezing as it fell into shadow]]. The opening band performances were canceled after the woodwind players found the cold prevented their instruments from working while the brass players got their lips frozen to the mouthpieces, and several were hospitalized for hypothermia. Many of the players had to take alternate transport to the stadium when their cars wouldn't start, including linebacker Dave Robinson resorting to hitchhiking. There wasn't proper clothing for the weather available, forcing the referees to run to clothing stores. Referee Norm Schachter injured his lips when they ''froze to his whistle'' after the start of play, and for the rest of the game they all officiated through voice alone. According to some Green Bay fan testimonies, several of the Dallas fans, having taken the train up to Green Bay for the game, were unprepared for the frigid weather, and one elderly fan in the stands actually died from exposure. The Ice Bowl has been cited as the reason why, until 2013, the UsefulNotes/SuperBowl was only ever played in warm-weather cities or in domed stadiums. But despite all this (and in a large part because), it's widely considered one of the greatest football games ever played due to the long rivalry between the Packers and Cowboys, and the highly dramatic winning touchdown from the Packers in [[DownToTheLastPlay its final moments]]. |
| 161 | * In 2012, the NFL's normal referees staged a walkout in protest of being denied a range of pay raises that would've totaled around three million dollars. In 2001, the league persevered through a similar walkout by enlisting the help of top-level UsefulNotes/{{NCAA}} officials, but this time the college referees sided with their NFL counterparts and refused to cross the figurative picket line. Instead, the NFL used a motley crew of amateur referees from wherever they could find them, including lower NCAA divisions, the Arena Football league, and even the Lingerie Football League. The experiment was a disaster; for the first three weeks of the season, fans and players were treated to an officiating team who was completely out of their depth, frequently making poor decisions and wasting valuable time in doing so. During Week 1 of the season, the Eagles vs. Browns game saw the referees spend six minutes trying to decide whether a fumble recovery could be reviewed (it could not). Their lax approach to officiating also resulted in players realising they could play ''far'' more aggressively than usual without punishment, proven after Darrius Heyward-Bey was knocked unconscious after a brutal helmet-to-helmet collision in a play which wasn't flagged. Ultimately, the final straw was the play that came to be known as "The Fail Mary". During the Week 3 Packers vs. Seahawks game, the Packers seemingly intercepted a last-second pass into the endzone, only to have the victory handed to the Seahawks after it was judged to be a touchdown due to simultaneous possession of the ball (despite a penalty that should have nullified the touchdown). That moment alone accelerated talks between the NFL and their referees, resulting in the original refs returning to the field in Week 4 (as in, that week's Thursday night game, just ''three days'' after the Fail Mary). This came after reports that several players, including ''the entire Packers team'', were considering a boycott of their own against the replacement refs had the lockout continued. Even so, the original referees came back [[PetTheDog to cheering from the fans]]. |
| 162 | * During the first quarter of a January 2023 game between the Buffalo Bills and the Cincinnati Bengals, Bills safety Damar Hamiln went into cardiac arrest shortly after tackling Bengals WR Tee Higgins.[[note]]It was later determined that Hamlin suffered commotio cordis, an often-fatal disruption of heart rhythm that results from a blow to the area directly over the heart during a critical instant during a heartbeat cycle. Higgins' helmet had struck Hamlin's chest during the tackle. The condition is rare because it can only occur during a window of about 40 milliseconds in the heart's electrical cycle. There have been other occurrences of this in sports in the past, one example being NHL player Scott Stevens going into cardiac arrest after getting hit in the chest with a puck while trying to block a shot (to his credit [[WasItReallyWorthIt he did block it]]), like Hamlin he would fully recover and come back to play[[/note]] After being administered CPR on the field for almost ten minutes, Hamlin was rushed to the hospital in critical condition. Both teams refused to resume the game, which would be suspended by NFL commissioner Roger Goodell and later outright cancelled, resulting in the game officially going in the books as a no-contest. This was thus the first regular-season game cancellation since 1987 and the first ever regular-season game to get canceled for something other than weather or a players' strike. One silver lining in all this: a [=GoFundMe=] started by Hamlin prior to his collapse to raise money for a toy drive ended up getting over almost $9 million in donations once his story hit the national news. While Hamlin recovered with his mental faculties mostly intact — to the point that doctors called it an outright miracle that he retained as much as he did — the fact Hamlin came within moments of death caused a lot of discussion in American sports media following the game. Hamlin has since been cleared to play again and remains on the Bills' active roster. |
| 163 | [[/folder]] |
| 164 | |
| 165 | [[folder:Other]] |
| 166 | * The 1983 Pan-American Games[[note]]a sort of pre-Olympics for the Western Hemisphere held the year before the official Summer Olympics[[/note]] held that August in [[UsefulNotes/{{Venezuela}} Caracas, Venezuela]] would be one of the more bizarre, particularly from a television production standpoint as alluded to by former [[Creator/{{CBS}} CBS Sports]] (and later [[Creator/{{NBC}} NBC Sports]]) executive producer Terry O'Neil in his 1989 book ''The Game Behind the Game''. |
| 167 | ** Preparation began with a 1982 meeting with O'Neil and his CBS crew with the organizing committee led by Dr. Osvaldo Colmenarez. By the time negotiations ended, the Venezuelan committee agreed to give CBS an effective blank slate, including exclusive United States rights, providing all of the hardware for the venues and studio, allow CBS to produce the "world feed" while guaranteeing 16.5 hours of mostly live coverage for the low, low price of $900,000.[[note]]for comparison, the 1984 Summer Olympics rights fee that Creator/{{ABC}} paid: $225 million[[/note]]. Things seemed too good to be true, and by early 1983 disaster had struck Venezuela in the form of the organizing committee offices being burned down in what was suspected to be arson. Worse, Venezuela's economic over-reliance on oil came back to bite them when the [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1980s_oil_glut oil glut]] caused the price of oil to plummet, leading to the bolivar being devalued by Venezuela's government and creditors demanding repayment of its foreign debt and speculation that the Games might be canceled. |
| 168 | ** In light of Venezuela's economic difficulties, infrastructure had been put on the back-burner when the CBS production team returned in February 1983; with a barely started construction site where the CBS Broadcast Center was supposed to be, an abandoned gym that was to be the site of the gymnastics events and whose leaky roof caused the floor boards to be warped and the Olympic Stadium was in equally poor shape with lumps in the track area and the infield having a combination of bare spots and crabgrass. Eventually, in light of the fact that the broadcast center was clearly not going to be ready by the time the Pan-Am Games began on August 14, Venezuela offered to let CBS use the government-run Venezolana de Television, Channel 8 (though that turned out to be an empty room when it was shown to O'Neil and director Joe Aceti two weeks before the opening ceremonies). And CBS wasn't the only firm having difficulties getting payments, as videotape machine manufacturer Ampex halted delivery of its machines after not receiving a $1.8 million payment; while mobile units built in Spain made a similar decision while waiting for their payment. In the end, construction kick-started during the final two weeks in getting things ready for the opening ceremonies following O'Neil threatening to have CBS back out, with work continuing as late as an hour before the ceremonies[[note]]at one point, CBS commentator John Tesh ended up suffering a damaged cornea after construction work inside the hotel he was staying in led to a sliver of concrete landing under Tesh's contact lens[[/note]]. |
| 169 | ** The opening ceremonies had its own broadcast hiccups. As the Pan-American Games are held under the Olympic charter, they could not be officially started without the host country's head of state, which in Venezuela's case would have been President Luis Herrera Campins - who was not known for his punctuality. The format put together by O'Neil was set for a planned appearance of Campins followed by the Parade of Nations, though if he was more than [[TemptingFate two minutes late they would go ahead and start the parade without him]] and CBS had been given cueing control of UsefulNotes/{{Argentina}}, the first nation in the parade. However, a minute into a taped preview, Campins arrived early; resulting in Terry O'Neil ordering (unrelated) production assistant Pierce O'Neil to hold Argentina, with Pierce holding Argentina until a pair of uniformed soldiers jabbed an Uzi at Pierce's chest before Terry yelled to "Cue Argentina"[[note]]Terry O'Neil would later note that the New York Times' Lawrie Mifflin, apparently unaware of the behind-the-scenes chaos, wrote that the production "went off without a hitch". |
| 170 | ** The actual events went off fairly smoothly until a doping scandal broke after several weightlifters tested positive for performance-enhancing drugs, in most cases anabolic steroids (among them, American Jeff Michaels, who was stripped of his three gold medals) and that 12 American track-and-field athletes were planning to leave hours before track events began, as a positive test would result in a lifetime ban; resulting in CBS assigning a series of crews in a form of ambush journalism to confront the athletes. The story broke on CBS Radio and even managed to be the top story on that night's ''CBS Evening News''. In all, 17 athletes tested positive (mostly for anabolic steroids) and a total of 21 medals were revoked while a follow-up story revealed that Chuck Debus, an American track coach, routinely prescribed steroids as part of his training background after American sprinter Lisa Hopkins withdrew. One of the athletes who left, Mike Tully, would later return, win the gold medal in the pole vault and his drug test would be clean. |
| 171 | ** In all, CBS — in addition to gaining prestige in breaking what turned out to be the big news story in the Pan-Am Games — ended up with a $600,000 profit while the 1983 Pan Am Games gained a measure of notoriety as the first major sporting event that included reasonably accurate steroid testing. |
| 172 | [[/note]] |
| 173 | [[/folder]] |
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