1st gambling ban: Aurore Fleury - suspended for 6 months - for having faith and betting on her partner Alice Finot to win Euros

What is the argument for betting on someone to win? Throwing a competition and losing on purpose is where the potential problems lay. But you can't rig it for a specific person to win unless you're colluding with the other athletes to lose on purpose. The only argument is they have insider information to know that the person is in really good shape. But that still doesn't guarantee they'll win.

The suspended athlete had no way of influencing the outcome of this race, a suspension feels a bit harsh. You can't even say they had insider knowledge because the other athlete's training was an unknown factor.

you've answered your own question, so why ask it?

How did I answer it? By having insider information? Anyone who follows a runner on Strava has insider information then I guess.

Funny though because if the bet lost, the sports book would not have reported it.

I'm all for a complete ban on sports betting worldwide, but this case makes no sense with the information we've been given.

Hardly the first.

Both ultra events and racewalking have a foundation in the pedestrianism movement of the late 1800 and early 1900 time period. Walking was a spectator sport and was rife with controversy and immoral people.

In 1906 Australian Billy McDonald was banned from pedestrian races after he was caught throwing a match.

You can know your training partner deliberately underperformed in previous races. You can know your training partner used her last two races as workouts. You can know your training partner has done recent workouts at a new level. You can know your training partner recently started using PEDs. You can know your training partner was sick in her last race. Etc. etc.

Except if they lose the bet, get in money problems, and then are leaned on by organized crime to fix subsequent races. That's why any betting on the sport you participate in is banned by all leagues. Also, as seen with baseball pitchers who fixed the outcome of individual pitches which organized crime then bet on, you could not fix the race but still fix the competition. Say an online gambling app is giving odds that Fleury won't run under 4:15 for the 1500m in a Wednesday night club race that everyone knows she'll win. She could run 4:18...and it's those prop bets that cause corruption.

That might be the Frenchest name in history. Maybe runner up to Surrender-Jacques Fromage.

People don’t take the gambling rules seriously. Anyone with a media credential is also not allowed to bet or give information. If you have an Olympic media credentials you are forbidden from betting on any Olympic sport. Mentioning any betting site or promoting betting on the events. It’s not exactly hard to know. You can just google it for Olympic media credentials and betting.

2 German athletes also.

All three pleading ignorance of rules, with very small amounts wagered by Janssen and Richter, but still, you're meant to be across the rules. It's the same as you can't play the lottery if you run the lottery, same principle.

https://www.athleticsintegrity.org/downloads/pdfs/other/Press-Release_Zero-Tolerance-to-Betting-%E2%80%93-AIU-Sanctions-French-and-German-Athletes.pdf

Possible silver lining for those three though is this line:

I read that as being a statement by AIU that they have clean records in terms of doping, whereabouts violations etc? Nice thing to have put out on your behalf?

You can know all this without being her training partner. Is her family and friends prohibited from betting on her? Of course not, this happens all the time in other sports.

The Aurore Fleury situation is completely ridiculous. Nobody needed inside information to know that Finot was much the best in that field. Fleury should have been banned if she hadn't wagered.

Finot ran 9:06 the prior year at world championships. She was +150 odds at 2024 Europeans only because it was her first steeplechase of the year. I guarantee Fleury saw those odds and was in absolute disbelief. It was a glorified handout.

Finot basically jogged the semifinal, trying only from the final water barrier forward. That lax effort may have caused the inflated price. Then she essentially did the same thing in the final, only accelerating at the final water barrier.

Two months later Finot she ran the breakthrough 8:58 for 4th in Olympic final.

Aurore Fleury took advantage of extreme value

I forgot to mention that 2024 Europeans were held in extremely hot conditions for early June. It was 31 celsius when then women's steeplechase heats were held. It would have been stupid for Finot to go all out for a fast time in those conditions, when all she needed was top 8 to advance.

The articles don't specify when Fleury made the wager. If it was after the semifinal then it's even more understandable to me. That is a somewhat obscure event and the oddsmakers put up a criminally pathetic price.

That's what happens when they don't have reliable power ratings and are forced to rely on flimsy subjectivity.

This was painful to read. You used the symbol for Euros but wrote out "pounds"? And then you use the symbol for Euro AND the symbol for dollars. What currency exactly was the bet and the winnings and the donation in?