Doesn't Anyone Play by the Rules?

George Orwell famously described the international sporting fixtures of the mid-1940s as "war minus the shooting." Looking at the newspaper back pages six decades later, his ghost would probably diagnose not an exercise in disguised nationalism but a series of deceptions practiced on a credulous public. Never, it seems, has the annual summer sports extravaganza been so inflamed by scandal. An inquiry into match fixing in the Italian Serie A soccer league looks set to bring the enforced relegation of four leading clubs.

A few hundred kilometers to the north, several much-fancied entrants in this year's Tour...

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