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Lakers' center Dwight Howard has no clue how the coronavirus works

1. Congrats to Lakers center Dwight Howard. He has the honor of giving us the most ridiculous quote we've seen from an athlete during quarantine.

Howard has already been clear that he isn't into wearing a mask and

LeBron James likely won't win MVP, but he's about to show why he should, again.

LeBron James knows Giannis Antetokounmpo is going to win MVP and that’s a problem for the rest of the league.

The Brewers manager is better equipped than any other to leverage all of MLB's changes in 2020.

Milwaukee Brewers manager Craig Counsell is to a roster and nine innings what a manual juicer is to an orange: whatever is in there he will wring out, even if it creates an aesthetic mess. Over the past three years no National League team has received fewer innings from its starting pitchers, which used to be a recipe for failure, but for Milwaukee it means two playoff appearances and three straight years with 86 or more wins, tying a franchise-best run.

Now stand back and tighten your apron, because the mad chef of Milwaukee is about to create another beautiful mess.

Think of this improvised baseball season as a bake-off among managers. Among their new rules of engagement: a short training camp, a 30-man roster for the first two weeks, extra innings that start with a runner at second base, a three-batter minimum for mid-inning relievers, a DH in the NL, and a 60-game

Serena Williams, Abby Wambach, Mia Hamm, Natalie Portman and a host of other stars, celebrities and industry leaders are bringing the NWSL to Los Angeles.

The NWSL is expanding to Los Angeles—and it's doing so in a very L.A. way.

A loaded ownership group that features a slew of former U.S. women's national team stars (including Mia Hamm, Abby Wambach, Julie Foudy and Lauren Holiday), celebrities (including founder Natalie Portman, Eva Longoria, Jessica Chastain, Jennifer Garner and Uzo Aduba) and industry leaders (including Kara Nortman, Julie Uhrman and Alexis Ohanian)

Tobias Harris used his entire media session on Monday to call for the arrest of the police officers who killed Breonna Taylor.

He only had one thing to say

By the time the NBA plays its first games in Orlando, it will have been nearly five months since police in Louisville shot and killed 26-year-old Breonna Taylor in her home. The cops who shot her remain free, and Sixers forward Tobias Harris doesn’t want people to forget it. 

Harris’s message during his time with the media on Monday was brief but crystal clear: Arrest the officers who fired more than 20 shots and hit Taylor eight times. 

Harris was asked about the

Meet some promising players who are getting a second look, courtesy of pandemic opt-outs.

Jaylyn Agnew was social distancing in Omaha, spending time lakeside and improving her comfort level with ball screens, when in June she received a couple of calls she hoped would come.

The Mystics drafted Agnew, the 2020 Big East Player of the Year, in April, but WNBA training camp had been canceled, just like her final NCAA postseason tournament. Then, Washington waived Agnew as the team finalized its 2020 roster. So, she shifted her focus to securing a contract to play overseas in Russia starting in September while refining her skills in case another WNBA opportunity came up.

The first call from Atlanta Dream head coach Nicki Collen, following WNBA vet Renee Montgomery’s decision to sit out the 2020 season, was to inform Agnew of her interest.

The next day, the coach asked her whether she wanted to join the Dream.

“I was like, Heck yeah,” Agnew says.

Agnew’s situation is unique to 2020 WNBA rookies, who transitioned from the college level to the pros, a time already filled with change and uncertainty, during a pandemic. Out of 36 draft picks, 17 rookies made rosters, 16 were waived and three chose to sit out for the 2020 season. As a result, supremely talented players don't have—or almost didn't have—homes in the league this year.

The upcoming season is set to begin on Saturday in Bradenton, Fla., where the league’s players and staff will live throughout the season and playoffs. Each team will play 22 games and practice at IMG Academy over the next few months.

Long before draft day, it was clear rookies would have a tough time making teams' 12-person rosters. A blockbuster free agency filled with trades and pay upgrades under the new CBA created an environment that meant five of the league’s 12 teams would have enough space under its salary cap to sign only 11 players. To boot, rookies weren’t able to increase their visibility during the NCAA tournament or compete for a spot during training camp.

“There’s a reason why we invited everybody we did to camp. There’s a reason why we drafted every player,” says Collen, whose roster initially included two rookies and eight total newcomers. “And when you don’t get the opportunity to see those players battle for spots, it’s disappointing. It’s heartbreaking because I was once that player. I know that feeling and wanting to be good enough and wanting that opportunity and loving the game.”

***

Making the cut depends a lot on where a player lands. Washington was one of those teams that had room for only 11 players, after signing both Emma Meesseeman and Elena Delle Donne to new max contracts and acquiring Olympian and 2012 WNBA MVP Tina Charles in a trade. Charles won’t play during the 2020 season for medical reasons, and Delle Donne is unlikely to. Mystics head coach Mike Thibault said the team will continue to pay Delle Donne as she recovers from back injury. Agnew, along with the Mystics’ third-round choice, Sug Sutton, were cut, as were most rookies on 11-players teams. The rebuilding New York Liberty would keep six rookies (and they’ve since added another), but the L.A. Sparks had none.

Only half of 2020 second-round picks made rosters for the May 26 deadline, which was created so players could begin receiving pay on June 1. The lack of visibility especially hurt third-rounders like Erica Ogwumike, who Lynx GM and manager Cheryl Reeve said had a realistic chance to make the final cut in Minnesota.

The Storm drafted Duke’s Haley Gorecki at No. 33 on April 17. She is a versatile guard who played a massive role in Duke’s entry into the NCAA tournament conversation last season due to her ability to get into the lane or score from three-point range. As a redshirt senior, she averaged 18.0 points, 6.5 rebounds, 4.0 assists and 2.0 steals, something no other Power 5 player did last season.

The Storm waived Gorecki on May 26. It was the first time she’d been cut from a team. Seattle’s lone 2020 rookie is Ezi Magbegor, who was drafted in 2019. The organization announced on draft night that its 2020 first-round pick, Latvian Kitija Laksa, would not be competing in the WNBA this season.

Seattle’s final roster is mostly made up of the players who won the WNBA title in 2018. And while Gorecki understands the situation and that players needed to get paid, there’s a sting that comes with being cut without having a chance to prove yourself.

“I would get super frustrated and upset and my brother would go like, ‘Haley, it’s out of your control,’ ” she says. “This whole process has been very fun, and I know my career will still go on. I’m staying optimistic. I’m really excited for everything to happen that’s coming and for next year as well.”

She wants to play for as long as she can and is preparing to play for Basket Zaragoza in Spain. While with her family in Palatine, Ill., the self-proclaimed gym rat has kept working out consistently in her routine. She normally doesn’t sit still long enough to binge too much TV, but she has watched Outer Banks and Tiger King.

Meanwhile, two third-round picks, Mikayla Pivec and Kiah Gillespie, were designated as “Non-Active” by the Dream and the Sky, respectively, which means they’ll sit out the 2020 season but the teams would retain their rights, and they’ll have a spot to land for training camp in 2021. The other third-rounders were waived.

“I mean, of course I wanted to come in and, you know, play in the WNBA and have that opportunity,” Gillespie says. “But I think if you look at the bigger picture, maybe it is the better chance for me to develop and then come back.”

Gillespie calls this moment in life a blessing in disguise. At FSU, she played as a stretch four with the footwork and skills to score in the paint as a post, but could hit from three or dish to a transitioning teammate. In the WNBA, she would likely have transitioned to the three, or small forward, position. Now, she’s moved back home to Connecticut and regularly shows up for tea time with her mom—whether it’s 7:30 a.m., 9 a.m. or 11 a.m.—and competes on Madden with her brothers. She’s signed to play in Israel for Maccabi Ra’anana for the 2020–21 season.

The Sky originally went with 11 players for its final roster after offseason trades and signings were made to keep the core that made the 2019 playoffs under first-year coach James Wade intact. Ruthy Hebard, the team’s No. 8 pick out of Oregon made the cut. But following a mutual decision between Gillespie and the Sky, she will sit out the season, play overseas and wait for training camp in 2021.

The Sky’s Diamond DeShields left the University of Tennessee and played in Turkey before entering the WNBA draft. DeShields reached out to Gillespie with advice.

“ ‘Use this as fuel,’ ” Gillespie recalls. “ ‘Take this step and be able to come in and be ready for what’s next.’ And I think that was really huge. And I definitely think her process wasn’t perfect. [But] I think what she did is what helped her be where she is now.”

Gillespie, who wants to eventually become a college coach, says her redshirt year in 2017–18, after transferring from Maryland to Florida State, prepared her for this moment. It’s when she learned discipline and revamped her attitude and game.

“It definitely taught me what it was like to basically have to build yourself up all over again.”

***

The obstacles that hurt players have now created a new chance for those on the margins of rosters.

Players have the option to opt out of the season, like Montgomery, who plans to focus on social justice work, and multiple have. And like Agnew, athletes are getting new opportunities to play. Similar to draft picks, which players are picked up depends on need, fit, culture, personal preference and potentially many other circumstances.

“There are times when teams get to the point where you’ve got a short list of who you would add, if you were ever in that situation, so I think it still falls in that same situation,” Collen says. “Whether it’s an opt out, whether it’s COVID, whether it’s injury, whatever the procedure’s gonna be for us, coaches are always thinking about what’s next, who’s up next.”

The Sun signed No. 20 pick Beatrice Mompremier after Jonquel Jones opted out due to concerns about the coronavirus. The Liberty signed No. 19 Joyner Holmes after Stephanie Talbot remained in Australia. No. 18 pick Te’a Cooper signed with the Sparks after Kristi Toliver opted out of the season.

In grade school, Cooper wrote a song about playing for L.A., and it became a family joke. “It's Te’a from the arc, I shoot it from the park-ing lot, a lot, I should be on the Sparks!’

Cooper, a guard who has experience both facilitating at the point and efficiency hitting three-pointers, played in college at Tennessee, South Carolina and most recently Baylor. She was drafted by the Mercury at No. 18. The Mercury narrowed its roster down to 11—no rookies—and waived Cooper. She knew then it wasn’t the end and continued training.

“I just tried to stay positive and I stayed in the gym. And just so happened, I got a call from my agent one day, and he was like, ‘I hope you are in shape,’ and I'm like ‘What, stop playing. Stop playing, what am I in shape for?’” she says.

Sparks head coach Derek Fisher and general manager Michael Fisher called, asked her about herself and her thoughts on the Sparks. On June 28, the team announced her signing.

Her thought process through the signings, cuts and abrupt end to her college career: I can only control myself.

She’s taking that mantra into the bubble as she plays on a team filled with vets like Candace Parker, Seimone Augustus, Nneka Ogwumike and Chelsey Gray.

“I’m excited just to be here and to be around them. So, just giving all my energy to them and pouring into them is gonna help me,” Cooper says. “Just really being a part and enjoying my teammates and the situation that I’m in. That’s all I wanna do, and that’s what I’m going to take from this experience.”

Stella Johnson was the first WNBA draft pick in Rider’s history, but expected the cut that came after Phoenix selected her. It wasn’t because the Mercury had built on the WNBA’s new superteams during the offseason, having Diana Taurasi, Skylar Diggins-Smith and Brittney Griner on one roster, which ultimately created salary cap limitations. Her preparation for Sandy Brondello’s call stemmed from being a third-round draft pick coming from a mid-major.

“I knew I wasn’t gonna get the chance to present myself in training camp. I think people have an idea about mid-majors, like you haven’t played against the high teams, the high-DI teams,” she says. “If you’re not gonna get the chance (this year), you can get a chance next year. I think that’s what I set my mind on, just be able to get better overseas and have another chance next season, hopefully COVID free and everything.”

She was shocked when Chicago called to sign her. Sydney Colson tested positive for COVID-19, and Sky head coach James Wade had his eye on Johnson during the NCAA season because of her efficiency, toughness and consistency.

While isolating with her parents in New Jersey, Johnson spent most of her time on TikTok, finding new recipes and movies to watch on Netflix. She loves cooking and going for walks with her mom, but also was in the gym three to four times a week.

Now, she’s working to get comfortable calling plays as a WNBA point guard.

In practice, Courtney Vandersloot, Allie Quigely and Diamond DeShields are giving her advice. She’s also been “comparing notes” with fellow rookie Ruthy Hebard. Like Cooper, she’s become a sponge in training camp and taking advantage of a second opportunity to join the WNBA.

The players who initially missed out on opportunities with 2020 rosters, only to be given second chances later, are not only rookies like Cooper and Johnson. Veterans like Reshanda Gray, Essence Carson, Betnijah Laney and Alex Bentley, who didn’t return to their 2019 rosters, also were picked up after opt outs.

Indiana guard Erica Wheeler went undrafted out of Rutgers in 2013. After starting her career in Puerto Rico and Brazil, she was signed by the Fever in 2015. With 144 spots, she says making a roster is tough for everyone, not just rookies.

“I think it’s just a numbers problem, because you got some players that’s really good that just don’t make it,” she said.

“Because you can’t keep every great player. If you got A and B, and A’s been in the league already, you gon' keep A instead of B because B is a newcomer and A already got games under they belt.”

***

The groundbreaking new CBA didn’t explicitly address expansion. Its core changes focused on increasing quality of life for its players as well as the growth and sustainability of the current iteration of the league.

WNBA commissioner Cathy Englebert, who recently reached her one-year mark with the league, frequently says she wants to create an environment where all 12 current franchises are thriving before focusing on expansion.

“I mean, it has to be viable. It has to be a team that’s committed to the long term. It has to be one that makes sense in terms of the breakdown of our league,” Collen says. “I’d love to see growth in this league and more teams, but it has to make financial sense. It has to make logistical sense for the league. I think it’ll come. But right now we have to know that we have 12 really healthy franchises before we add any others.”

The landscape of free agency and deluge of cuts did lead to renewed debates over expansion, either of roster spots or the number of teams. These debates have intensified over recent seasons, due to talent getting better and the increased popularity of the league. The last new team to join the league was the Atlanta Dream in 2008.

Proponents of immediate expansion want to see talented players given the opportunity to play. While it’s been more than a decade since the Houston Comets and the Sacramento Monarchs folded, opponents of immediate expansion fear adding teams quickly or without the right ownership could lead to franchises folding.

But for now, there’s 12-player rosters, 12 teams, 144 spots and 36 draft picks. Wheeler’s journey took her from undrafted to 2019 WNBA All-Star MVP. She exists as proof that surviving as a draft pick isn’t the only route a player can take to enter the league.

“You put the work in and eventually your time will come, and when it comes, you do what you need to do,” she says. “Everything is all about opportunity and [being in the] right place. If you grind hard enough, it’ll come. Any player that’s getting an opportunity to play in this league, which is hard as hell to get in, it’s just 144 players, I just think that you can’t take no days off because at any given moment it can get stripped away from you. Like I said, it’s one of the best leagues in the world. So if you can be the best among the best, I think that speaks for itself.”

Our Business of Football analyst looks at the latest in the negotiations between the NFL and NFLPA. Plus, concerns about Patrick Mahomes's mega-extension and thoughts on the culture Dan Snyder has allowed in Washington.

As other leagues such as the NBA, MLB and NHL start gearing up to play, the NFL is all about business right now and, as my readers know, that is what’s driving all decisions in sports and business. Indeed,

U.S. Olympic swimmer and gold medalist Simone Manuel sees the events of 2020 as an opportunity to use her platform to further conversations about race and advocate for more diversity in swimming.

The beliefs, convictions and frustrations have been there for years, percolating. Sometimes they went unspoken. Sometimes they were articulated in measured tones. There was no yelling, at least not in public.

In 2020, Simone Manuel is raising her voice.

“I feel in the past, I used my platform,” she told Sports Illustrated. “But not loudly.”

Always proud. Now, loud and proud.

Manuel’s increased volume has coincided with a particularly acute moment in America, and the result is a powerful alchemy. An articulate, 23-year-old gold medalist who will be one of the marquee faces in Tokyo next summer—if there is an Olympics next summer—has a multi-layered message she is shouting out on social media and elsewhere.

About being a Black superstar pushing for diversity and inclusion in the overwhelmingly white sport of swimming. About being Black in America in a year when George Floyd and Breonna Taylor were killed by white cops. About registering to vote, and then voting. About wearing a mask for the good of everyone. About so many things happening here and now.

“These are conversations I’ve had with my parents for years,” Manuel said. “I’ve always had a drive to want to speak out loudly. But I think it’s more accepted to speak your truth now, without people saying, ‘Uh, no-no, that can’t be true, that couldn’t have happened, that can’t be racist.’

“I think people are more accepting hearing about it. People have tried to understand more where I’m coming from.”

More people are ready to have the conversation. And Manuel is more than ready to be a conversation starter.

Really, this began for Manuel before the terrible events of the spring pushed the Black Lives Matter movement to the forefront of American discourse. Before the ensuing protests ricocheted around the country. Before there was a pandemic that rocked the world.

It began in January, with a conversation between Simone and her mom, Sharron. At issue: How outspoken is too outspoken? Or not outspoken enough?

In the buildup toward Tokyo 2020, Manuel had become an increasingly attractive pitch woman for major corporations—Toyota, Nike, Coca-Cola, TYR swimsuits and others have signed her up. A Black swimming star with a Stanford degree, a sharp mind, a winning smile, status as the foremost female freestyle sprinter in the world—she was an advertising dream.

But corporate dollars can come with corporate handcuffs, and in the swimming world endorsement money is infamously elusive. Manuel had always advocated for a more diverse swimming community; could she now push the envelope further on other race-related issues without risk to her shiny public image?

“We were just kind of going over what you want to do and where you want to be,” Sharron said. “I just said, ‘Well, Simone, at some point you just have to tell your story.’ All this arose from what was already simmering. Deep down inside, she always knew she was going to have to speak on these issues—not politics, but humanity and equality. She wanted to be authentic and raw with the truth.”

So Sharron’s advice was simple: Say what comes to your heart, Simone. So she has. This is no bland athlete avoiding opinions to go along and get along.

There have been Instagram and Twitter posts that flash anger at persistent racism. There have been soul-searching posts that articulate disappointment and sadness, including a May 28 Instagram treatise that ends thusly:

“The words ‘freedom,’ ‘justice,’ and ‘equality’ are uttered by many, BUT do we really experience it? No! We have yet to experience it collectively as a nation, and we won’t until we all come together and fight for it … until we’re ‘all in this together.’

“If this makes you uncomfortable, check your privilege. Think of those who lack comfort EVERY SINGLE DAY.”

Reaction has been predominantly positive, from rank-and-file fans to corporate backers. In fact, Manuel is one of four Olympic or Paralympic athletes featured in a

The Summer Games, which were supposed to open this week, have seen their share of cheaters—but none as bold as Boris Onischenko.

The phone call comes at the supper hour. A Ukrainian number. The voice—speaking Russian—is polite, formal, unwavering.

“Would you be ready to meet with us?”

“No.”

“So you do not want to?”

“Absolutely not.”

“Why? Because it is painful to talk about?”

“It’s a painful wound for me. I don’t want to trouble myself, and you as well. I don’t want to exculpate myself. I don’t want to talk about who I am, bad and good. I am very thankful for your care, but I refuse to cooperate with you.”

The man is old now, 83 in September. He will not trudge a winding staircase to his personal attic and rummage through the lock box of memory, brushing cobwebs off a sultry, long-ago July morning to offer a why or a how for your benefit. He seeks neither your comprehension nor your absolution. He will offer no remorse or penitence. He will make no effort to place the day in context, to frame the event in the whorl of his times.

The story is dead. After 40 seconds, the conversation is dead.

“Всего хорошего,” he says. “Всего хорошего.”

All the best. All the best.

And with that, the greatest cheat in Olympic history hangs up.

***

Seven a.m., July 19, 1976. The athletes’ bus from the Olympic Village is snaking six miles southwest to the Université de Montréal as unlikely seatmates conduct business. They are of different cultures, of different countries and of different stature in their sport, modern pentathlon. Andy Archibald, Great Britain, is a team alternate. Boris Onischenko, Soviet Union, is a titan. He has won a world championship and an Olympic silver medal and been part of gold-and-silver-medal-winning Olympic teams. These men do have one thing in common, the basis for the transaction: They are left-handed, which, as the day unfolds, will be a significant detail.

Archibald particularly admires the custom-designed orthopedic grips of Onischenko’s épées. Through the years Archibald has been a reliable customer. Western pentathletes buy their own swords while the Soviets, mostly military men, have theirs supplied. So instead of paying 15 pounds sterling for a sword, Archibald can spend perhaps a third of that for a used Onischenko épée. Win-win. In rudimentary German, a shared language, the seatmates strike a deal, agreeing to finalize it at the conclusion of the five-day event.

This is the second day of competition. Of the five disciplines—riding, fencing, shooting, swimming and running—this sweltering Monday should belong to Onischenko. No pentathlete wields his épée with more skill or intent. A century earlier, when fencers were bound by honor instead of electric circuitry and body cords, Alexandre Dumas or some other ink-stained romantic might even have called him a swashbuckler.

By the end of the week he knows he will no longer need those swords. Onischenko turns 39 in two months and has scraped onto the team for Montreal, his third Olympics, but he will be long retired when the Games come to Moscow in four years. This will be a final grab for an individual Olympic title that will be worth more than its weight in gold. A victory will secure a promotion in the MVD, the Interior Ministry, where he holds the rank of captain, and likely lead to the perks that go to Olympic heroes: a bonus, better housing, a more comfortable future in the USSR.

At 8 a.m. on Piste E, the Soviets begin fencing against their countrymen. In one bout Onischenko faces Pavel Lednev, the reigning three-time world champion and the favorite for individual gold but not Onischenko’s equal with a sword. At the USSR Olympic trials, Onischenko had the vast majority of his bouts. “I fenced him six or eight times over the years,” says Mike Burley, an American pentathlete who placed 16th in the 47-man field in Montreal. “He always cleaned my clock. I was always hoping to get lucky, but against a guy like him you don’t get lucky.” Onischenko wins both intrasquad fights. At 8:45, bouts start against other nations. Great Britain is first.

Onischenko’s initial opponent is Adrian Parker, another lefthander. Onischenko lunges, and the light signaling a hit goes on. (A hit, scored when the tip of the épée is depressed, closes the open electrical circuit by making contact between the two wires that run the length of the sword to the base inside the bell guard. The circuit continues from a plug near the handle through the body wire in the fencer's jacket, through the electric spool, and to the scoring box, which triggers a red or green light to indicate who scored the hit.) Fight over. Onischenko’s touch seems too good to be true, at least to Parker. He removes his mask and protests to referee Guido Malacarne that he hasn’t been hit. Following a cursory examination of Onischenko’s épée—all swords must pass inspection before competition—the referee does not annul the touch.

“Adrian was pretty grumpy,” says Mike Proudfoot, the Great Britain team manager who estimates he was less than two meters from the piste. “But at that point my job was not to let it affect Fox.”

Jeremy Fox—known as Jim to everyone but his mother—is Britain’s fair-haired, blue-eyed boy, the very model of the modern modern pentathlete: worldly, mannered and James Bond handsome. He is held in the highest regard inside the sport and out. Fox possesses a singular gift, the ability to talk to royalty or rogues and make everyone around him feel special. “One of his favorite expressions was ‘it takes [no] effort to be nice to people,’” Archibald says. Fox, a four-time Olympian, has fenced Onischenko often, notably at the 1972 Games, when Onischenko took the silver medal and Fox placed fourth. Four years later their dance begins anew.

Modern pentathlon épée bouts end with a single legitimate hit or after three minutes if there are no touches. Fox and Onischenko are 40 seconds from the end—both will be assessed a loss if no hit is scored—when Fox lures Onischenko into an attack. In Richard Cohen’s 2002 exhaustive history of fencing, By the Sword, Fox describes the finish this way: “I was still outside hitting distance when I picked up Onischenko’s blade—really high, before his blade was anywhere near me. His blade was above my head. And I smacked [my point] into his chest, but the light was already on [against me.]” The hit is implausible at best, physically impossible at worst. At the instant Onischenko’s touch registers, the tip of his épée is pointing skyward.

“We hadn’t started yet, so we’re watching their match,“ Canadian pentathlete Jack Alexander recalls. “We’re sitting next to our coach, [Joe Bucsko], who was a real exaggerator. The light goes on and he says, ‘Boys, Onischenko’s so fast you couldn’t even see it.’ And all three of us are going, ‘Coach, he didn’t touch him.’ ”

Malacarne, who later would say he was paying closer attention to Onischenko after Parker’s protest, instantly reaches the same conclusion and annuls the hit. Onischenko does not object. “He apologized straight away,” Proudfoot says. “Sorry. Sorry, Jimmy, I’ll change my weapon.” Fox is not assuaged; merely swapping épées might allow Onischenko a chance to use the same one later to score more dodgy hits. As Malacarne tells Cohen in By the Sword, the Soviets actually produced a different épée for closer inspection—an impromptu game of three-sword monte. Despite the pantomime—Soviet team members deny there was any trickery—Malacarne seizes the correct épée. He summons the appeals jury to the piste to examine it. An hour later a public address announcement says Onischenko’s sword was found to have been faulty, and his score would be docked a trivial number of points.

The British team considers the penalty a slap on the wrist, which, in its view, is more contact than Onischenko ever made with Fox or Parker. Proudfoot begins writing an official protest by hand to argue that Onischenko’s faulty sword constitutes deliberate cheating, which should result in disqualification. At 10:40 he files the protest to the governing body, the Union Internationale de Pentathlon Moderne. A $25 filing fee is attached. The Montreal Games will become notorious for their staggering cost overruns, but 25 bucks is a wise investment even if the merciless gaze of a young fencing enthusiast already had detected chicanery. Twelve-year-old Nicholas Bacon, who is awaiting surgery for a brain tumor, has been watching the British matches intently. He turns to the woman seated next to him, a family friend, and announces that Onischenko is cheating. The woman, Bacon’s hostess, is Mary Glen-Haig, a formidable figure in fencing, a daughter of a 1908 Olympic fencer, a four-time Olympian herself and a future member of the International Olympic Committee. She pulls rank. Glen-Haig strides towards the pistes and collars the head of the fencing competition, telling him confiscation of the sword and a point deduction are insufficient penalties.

Voilà, les jeux sont faits. The officials who removed the sword discover a break in the grip’s insulation, although initially they can’t determine whether the cut has been made deliberately. But Glen-Haig’s blunt intervention has unsettled the modern pentathlon officials. The head of the International Fencing Federation, a Belgian named Charles Debeur, arrives to personally dismantle Onischenko’s épée. His inspection reveals that this is a matter of engineering, not happenstance.

A hole has been drilled in the grip, which has been covered by a snug-fitting chamois cloth. Inside the custom-made grip is a metal button. Onischenko simply has to press the button with fourth and pinky fingers to close the electrical circuit, turning on the light. No touch required. He can register a hit with impunity and conserve energy for the next three days of competition. In the one-page judgment of the jury d’appel, which includes Debeur, the rigged épée is “incontestablement un cas de fraude.” The smoking sword.

Sandy Kerekes, a Hungarian-born Montrealer, is the modern pentathlon competition director. The scene is preserved in his mind’s eye: He walks into his cramped office, and the three-member jury d’appel is seated in front of him. The sword, its grip laid bare, rests on a table. Onischenko is to his left. “He is almost collapsed in his chair as if the world had collapsed around him,” Kerekes says. “This was shame in front of the world. All the questions were asked. He never answered one. He claimed innocence.” (According to By the Sword, Onischenko later argues the rigged sword isn’t his, an alibi that stretches credulity like it’s taffy. Remember, he is left-handed. Every other member of his team, including alternate Vladimir Shmelev, is right-handed.) Kerekes again: “Calculated cheating. In athletic terms the crime he committed was a total murder.”

In accordance with the UIPM Rule book of 1974, articles 3.121 c, 1.36 and 1.37, Onischenko is disqualified. His name is removed from the venue scoreboards. Around 12:30, Alexander, the Canadian, steps into the hallway in time to see Onischenko hustled off by Soviet officials.

Proudfoot describes the exit similarly: “On this very hot day two guys appeared looking like what we thought of as typical KGB stooges. Two guys in trench coats and droopy hats. They took him by the elbows and removed him from the arena.” Onischenko’s swash is buckled.

Tuesday morning, July 20, a fencing story, apparently for the first time in its history, runs on A1 of The New York Times. Imagine. Twenty-four hours earlier Onischenko had been obscure, a champion whose triumphs in an anachronistic sport were recorded in agate type. Now he is a front-page fraud. A punch line. He quickly will be nicknamed Boris Dis-Onischenko because low-hanging fruit is the most tempting.

***

Last Feb. 25, the day an old man in Ukraine returns a Sports Illustrated call and firmly declines an interview, the IOC announces sanctions against Albanian 200-meter runner Klodiana Shala. In a retest of samples from London 2012, Shala’s came back positive for Stanozolol.

Stanozolol is an old-school anabolic steroid that crashed the Olympic lexicon in Seoul 1988, the wind beneath the wings of Ben Johnson, who had run 100 meters in 9.79, faster than any man before. Johnson’s failed doping test is often considered the biggest Olympic scandal because it occurred after the most anticipated event of the 17-day carnival, his showdown with Carl Lewis. This, of course, doesn’t make Johnson the greatest Olympic cheat—merely the most memorable. Six of the eight men in that race would be linked to PEDs. In future Summer Games, doping disqualifications would become depressingly common, primarily in athletics, which accounted for roughly two-thirds of the positive tests in London. In a more trusting time, Johnson’s positive drug test evoked shock and, in Canada, soul-searching in the form of a government inquiry into steroids in sport. After the incessant thrum of Balco and Lance Armstrong and Russia’s state-sponsored doping, the Seoul scandal is greeted three decades with a sad, knowing nod. Big Ben, greatest five-ringed cheat? Please. Cycling through PEDs doesn’t require much more than a supplier, a syringe, a protocol and a cracked moral compass.

Onischenko’s scam, on the other hand, was ingenious. He had moxie. He, or some devious helper, had a grasp of electronics. His guile could make a 2017 Houston Astro blush. Onischenko put the skull in skulduggery.

“It was unique,” Olympic historian Bill Mallon says. “Almost all the other cheating has been related to PEDs. There were some gender identity things at the [1936] Berlin Olympics and in the early ’60s, but nothing with rigged equipment.”

If memory of Onischenko’s ruse has faded with the years, it’s because his is a sport that hides in plain sight. While other Olympics sports vanished or went on hiatus—adieu, tug-of-war; grab some bench, baseball—modern pentathlon has just sort of been a face in the crowd. The modern Games began in 1896; modern pentathlon has been on the program since 1912. If that inaugural competition is noteworthy, it’s only because the USA featured a brassy West Pointer named George S. Patton Jr., who placed fifth primarily because of a poor shooting performance; Patton would wind up on the podium in World War II.

Curiously, Pierre de Coubertin, creator of the modern Olympic movement, also founded modern pentathlon. (As father of an aggregation of military-type sports, de Coubertin is less James Naismith with peach baskets than Arianna Huffington with websites.) Modern pentathlon replicates the actions of a 19th-century French courier who rides, fences, swims, shoots and runs to deliver his message. (In his Modern Pentathlon, a Centenary History: 1912-2012, Archibald writes that de Coubertin originally favored rowing over shooting.) Modern pentathlon never realized de Coubertin’s grand vision of its champion being hailed as the ultimate Olympian, but in 2013 the IOC confirmed modern pentathlon—now streamlined to one or two days—as one of 25 core sports, at least through Tokyo 2020.

For all its relative anonymity, Olympic modern pentathlon offers another notable breach of propriety, one that predates Onischenko’s. The solecism occurred in Mexico City 1968, one year after the IOC introduced drug-testing protocols. Apparently to calm his nerves before the pistol shooting, Hans-Gunnar Liljenvall knocked back a couple of beers and tested positive for excessive alcohol, earning the dubious honor of being the first Olympian disqualified for doping. Compared with tampering with an épée, being turfed for a few brews seems overzealous. Liljenvall, a Swede, simply was putting the skol in skullduggery.

***

The 12-hour day at the venue is done. They are gathered in the British team room at the Olympic Village, marveling at the events of the morning, trying to make sense of a fencing fever dream. Fox is taking it particularly hard. He respects Onischenko and assumes the feeling is mutual. The rigged sword has rattled him. Fencing poorly, Fox ties for 18th on the day and now offers a sweeping apology. He says he likely has deprived Great Britain of a team medal. He announces he will consider dropping out.

At 10 p.m., there is a knock at the door. Surprise visitors. Pavel Lednev and Vladimir Shmelev.

They are friends with the British athletes, or at least something as close to friends as the ’70s Iron Curtain permits. Over the years the Soviets have introduced Fox to vobla—salt-cured fish—and Fox has bought Shmelev jazz records. Ella Fitzgerald. Louis Armstrong. They now apologize for the scheming Onischenko. “[Onischenko] had a reserved character,” Shmelev tells SI. “Like a lone wolf. Always alone, alone, alone.” When asked last May about the substance of the meeting, Shmelev says he and Lednev denied any knowledge of the crooked sword and told the British team that they were being allowed to remain in Montreal to compete individually.

Proudfoot recalls the conversation, conducted in English, as more revealing. “They were actually pleased with what had happened to Onischenko,” he says. “They said he had been reporting everything they did back to the authorities. This was the middle of the Cold War. And they had been doing black-market trading during their travels outside the Soviet Union. Caviar. Cameras. Stopwatches. They suspected Onischenko had [cheated] before. They commented on how well he had done at the USSR trials and that maybe he had been trying out his magic device then. … They seemed eager to disassociate themselves from Onischenko’s cheating. They were very keen to exculpate themselves.”

After 20 minutes the visitors leave. Two days later at the Olympic pool, Fox and Shmelev discuss Onischenko again. As a token of fellowship, Fox hands Shmelev a memento. “We didn’t have those types of things,” Shmelev says. “And they had these blue towels that said ‘Great Britain Modern Pentathlon.’ I still have that towel.”

***

The two men in the trench coats and droopy hats escort Onischenko to a Soviet ship docked in the port. He is confined to a cabin. Onischenko is front-page news in the Times, but the Montreal Gazette, seduced by Nadia Comaneci’s historic 10s, plays his caper on the seventh page of its Olympic coverage. The following day he is about to be stripped of his Soviet sporting honors, but he earns a promotion in the Gazette, to Page 3. An eight-paragraph story quotes an unnamed USSR official saying cheating is “a very sad matter.” The official adds, “The team did not know about it. The trainers did not know about it. It is a tragedy for the entire team. These are not our methods.”

The oft-repeated version of Onischenko’s next few days: He flies to Moscow, where Communist Party leader Leonid Brezhnev dresses him down, strips him of his rank and fines him 5,000 rubles. The details are mere curlicues to the script of the story, writ large in the West. “This affair,” Archibald says, “was wonderful propaganda.” Seven years before Ronald Reagan’s Evil Empire speech, at the height of a surrogate war being fought, in part, with games instead of bullets, Onischenko fit the tidy narrative: the duplicitous USSR and its East Bloc underlings vs. the noble U.S. and its upstanding allies. After Ben Johnson and so many other sporting scofflaws, dirt will be spattered practically everywhere. Not in 1976.

Rumors fly about Onischenko, beginning that afternoon in Montreal. They will for years. The most repeated has Onischenko being found dead, floating in a Moscow pool.

The truth is less le Carré. Onischenko doesn’t drown. He doesn’t kill himself. And he never is far from public view, at least in his hometown of Kiev. Several years after the Olympics, he attends the Soviet modern pentathlon championships there; Lednev and Mosolov spurn him. In 1985, Martin Dawe, a British pentathlon official, spots Onischenko in the crowd at the world junior championship in the city.

So what was he doing? Reportedly he was an athletic administrator. An August

2005 story in a Ukrainian newspaper, Ukrayina Moloda, mentioned that

Onischenko had been heading the Atlet sports base since its founding 28 years

ago, a facility located on the grounds of the Olimpiyskiy National Sports

Complex in Kiev. Five years earlier, on a BBC 5 radio program that aired Christmas

Day 2000, its correspondent reported that Onischenko said he was working in a sports training

facility, teaching fencing. (The name of the series airing the Onischenko segment was Scandal!). The correspondent also mentioned Onischenko inquired about Jim Fox.

Three years earlier, in 1997, Fox was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease. He now lives in a residence, which is under quarantine because of COVID-19. On March 5, before the lockdown, 79-year-old Jim Fox, MBE, OBE, a recipient of the Olympic order, meets British modern pentathletes at their training center in Bath. Fox finds speech difficult on many days and was unavailable for an interview although Lieutenant Colonel (Ret.) Stuart Cowen, a friend, says, “Jim was devastated. He just thought Onischenko’s kit was a bit faulty. Jim told me, “’He didn’t need to cheat. He was the best fencer in the world.’”

***

No how. No when. No why.

There are gaping holes in this story of the greatest Olympic cheat. Maybe he masterminded and executed the caper himself. It seems probable but not provable that he had an accomplice. He could have been practicing his dark arts for months if not years. Or maybe he debuted his con on a pit-stained Monday in Montreal. Only Onischenko can say with certainty, and he will say nothing. No exculpation, no explanation.

Into the void, conjecture rushes in.

Mike Proudfoot: “The simple explanation is that he had achieved everything except [an individual] Olympic gold medal. This was his last chance.”

Andy Archibald: “This was a last desperate stab for immortality.”

Sandy Kerekes: “It had to be his own ego and materialism.”

Mike Burley: “Those guys from the Eastern Bloc would be pretty much set for life if they won a gold medal. The bottom line is it was so much more important to the guys on the other side of the wall.”

Proudfoot and Archibald share the opinion that Onischenko likely first used the rigged épée in Montreal if for no other reason than he bungled the job so badly. Diabolical in design, Mr. Bean in execution. Onischenko could register a hit at will, but inept timing beggared belief in the touches. Maybe he choked under Olympic pressure, but a more practiced trickster wouldn’t have pushed the button with his sword pointed skyward. On the biggest stage, Onischenko was as convincing as the schoolboy who signs a failing report card “My Mom.”

One man on the piste that day strongly suspects this was not Onischenko’s first time. He tells a darker tale. He is from the other side of the wall.

***

In mid-April as spring poked its head out, scanned the countryside and wondered whether it was safe to go outside, Boris Mosolov answers his phone. He is at his dacha north of Moscow, hunkered down with his cats and dogs. Mosolov is the other USSR pentathlete in Montreal, the third and youngest member of the team. He turned 70 in June, a man who carries a grudge as impressively as Russian soprano Anna Netrebko carries a tune. Forget? Hardly. Forgive? Not a chance. Mosolov recalls having to hide his accreditation to avoid hard glances and impertinent questions at the Village. How does that make an athlete feel? His teammates would achieve infamy or distinction—Lednev was inducted with the Modern Pentathlon Hall of Fame's inaugural class in 2016, six years after his death—but, unlike them, Mosolov would never win an Olympic medal nor compete in another Games. His Olympics turned to ashes.

During a 50-minute interview, Mosolov does the math. He calculates that if Onischenko had placed as low as 35th, the USSR still would have won the team gold. “I lost a lot because of it, materially and morally,” says Mosolov, who finished eighth. “The title of Olympic champion gives you a lot in Russia today—a pension and so forth. I’m stripped of all that because of him.”

Mosolov thinks the catalyst for the rigged épée was Onischenko’s failure to make the team for the 1975 world championships. The following summer, Montreal would be his last shot at an individual Olympic gold, assuming he qualified. Mosolov suspects Onischenko introduced the rigged weapon in April 1976 at a London event that counted in the selection process. But at the subsequent Soviet championships, before Montreal, Mosolov says Onischenko’s cheating was “unambiguously visible. People openly talked about it.” When confronted by competitors, Mosolov says, Onischenko was dismissive.

“The thing is I won the [Soviet championships] bout against him. He tried, of course. He knew who he was competing against,” Mosolov says. “[But] against second-rate athletes, he didn’t even beat around the bush. Whether he touched or not, the light would light up.… He was told about it. But he told everybody off. ‘I’m above that and that’s it.’ That’s how he was. Stubborn.”

Ultimately Onischenko’s mulishness might have contributed to his disqualification. Contradicting Western accounts, Mosolov says the weapon lay under a table as the fencing continued. “It was visible,” Mosolov says. “If Onischenko had said it was a rigged épée and it needed to be put away at all costs, theoretically Shmelev could have done that easily. If Onischenko had been a normal person, this is what would have happened. [But] he remained the asshole he was. He said everything’s fine. It’s clean. Although I know he was looking at that épée and seeing his own death.” As Russians are fond of saying, hope dies last.

So these are some answers to the how-when-why questions. One man’s answers, anyway. “Honestly, I think it’s even worse than doping,” Mosolov says. “With this button he deprived a competitor. It’s very revolting to me that a person resorts to that for the sake of his personal credo.”

In retrospect, Mosolov wonders whether seeds of the scam were planted even earlier. In 1972 Onischenko returned to Kiev a decorated Olympian, winner of the individual silver and the team gold for the USSR. His performance was splendid, but a fellow Ukrainian’s overshadowed it. Valery Borzov won the glamor events in Munich, the 100- and 200-meter sprints. He had international glory. Mosolov says, “Back home they hadn’t greeted him like Borzov. How can that be? I’m also an Olympic champion. I also have everything, but I’m not appreciated. That’s my opinion: He needed to be the most important [Olympian] in Kiev.”

***

Sandy Kerekes is 95. Over a Wiener schnitzel lunch at Foyer Hongrois in early March, a Hungarian seniors residence on the edge of downtown Montreal, he says he sometimes still dreams about Onischenko. Kerekes was nurtured in a prelapsarian sporting world and believes athletic competition—especially his sport—is meaningless if devoid of honor. Once Onischenko made the conscious decision to cheat, Kerekes says, “There were two ways for this to end. He could get caught. Or if he didn’t get caught and won, he would’ve been a total goddamn heel in his own head. This would have represented a downfall of a human mind. He would have lost his honor even if he would’ve been a hero for society and history.”

Honor, yes. That was ceded at the press of a button in an orthopedic left-handed grip. But Mosolov’s pension aside, not all was lost because the coda to this Olympic tragicomedy provides, in its way, a happy ending. Onischenko has no need for your forgiveness, because he received Fox’s long ago. “Jimmy forgave him,” says Dawe, the British official. “He felt Boris was under pressure to perform, which is what drove him to it.” Although disgraced, Onischenko is no international man of misery, seemingly having lived in relative comfort into old age. “They didn’t put him in jail,” Mosolov says. He laughs. “That wasn’t really done in practice, but they stripped him of all his titles. But no one can take that [1972 gold medal] from him. He’s an Olympic champion. And he’s still seen in Kiev as an Olympic champion.”

And there is this: Days after modern pentathlon stumbled onto the front page, Fox, Parker and Danny Nightingale took the team gold medal in a sizable upset. Win-win.

“Generally people in the sport don’t think evil of Onischenko,” Archibald says. “People understand the desperation of an act like that. He did get caught. He did get his comeuppance. But honestly the affair is viewed as something exciting. There’s a little Three Musketeers about pentathlon. The horse messenger galloping across the plain and all that. You need a little romance. It sells ourselves to the world.”

Special reporting by Gabrielle Tétrault-Farber.