Cheating elsewhere

Danny Almonte’s edge on the mound?

Youth sports are supposed to represent all that’s pure about athletics. Teamwork. Fair play. Sportsmanship. That is, unless you really want to win.

Danny Almonte guided his Bronx, NY, baseball squad into the 2001 Little League World Series with a string of dominant pitching performances. He even tossed a perfect game in the opener. However, his team was later stripped off its multiple regional championships and third-place showing at the 2001 LLWS when it was revealed Almonte was 14 years old, two years older than the LLWS age limit.

1919 CHICAGO WHITE SOX

Forget greased balls or corked bats. No other baseball brouhaha comes anywhere close to touching the social impact of the 1919 Black Sox scandal.

Looking nothing like Ray Liotta, Shoeless Joe remains a Hall of Fame pariah despite his eye-popping stats. Early in 20th century America, baseball was so much more than just a game. It was a national institution. Imagine the public’s shock and outrage when eight players from the Chicago White Sox were allegedly bribed by gamblers to throw the 1919 World Series to the Cincinnati Reds.

EAST GERMAN OLYMPIANS

The East Germans became a sporting powerhouse in the 1970s and ‘80s, rivalling the much larger United States and Soviet Union. Thousands of East German athletes were given performance-enhancing steroids in an effort to prove East German superiority over the West. Many thought they were simply taking vitamins.

BEN JOHNSON Hero to goat.

Johnson captured the imagination of Canadians and simply kept it that way until September 27, 1988, when he won the 100-metre sprint title in a world-record time of 9.79 seconds at the Seoul Olympics.

To make the victory even sweeter, Johnson captured the gold medal by defeating American rival Carl Lewis. The euphoria of Johnson’s win didn’t last, however, when it was found the Canadian tested positive for the anabolic steroid stanozolol.

SALE & PELLETIER

Jamie Sal? and David Pelletier’s initial second-place finish in the 2002 Winter Olympic pairs event shocked fans and experts around the world when the ordinals popped up on the arena scoreboard. Even more stunning was the saga that unravelled in the subsequent days, which included an alleged vote-swapping deal between Russian and French officials.

SPANISH PARALYMPIANS

The Spanish mentally-disabled basketball team captured gold at the 2000 Sydney Paralympics with a stellar performance on the court. But the glory soon faded when the Spanish Paralympic Committee later discovered 10 of the 12 team members had no mental deficiency.

TOUR DE FRANCE CYCLISTS

Cycling faced a near death following the 1998 doping scandal in which French officials caught an employee of the Festina cycling team with a carload of performance-enhancing drugs, including erythropoietin (EPO) - a hormone that helps the blood carry more oxygen, letting you go faster and longer on your two wheels.

STELLA WALSH

Polish-American sprinter Stella Walsh was one of the fastest women on the planet. Walsh set 20 world records and won 41 AAU titles in events such as sprints, long jump and discus throw. She was later shot and killed outside a Cleveland shopping mall.

Police autopsies revealed Walsh had male genitals and both male and female chromosomes -a condition known as mosaicism. A secret she managed to conceal since her childhood was out: “she” was a “he.”