It is just as well that Nadia Comaneci turned up with her scoreboard-befuddling antics, because without her there would have been worryingly little good news to cheer in Montreal.

On the eve of the opening ceremony – a threatened strike by broadcasters having been seen off only the previous day – a torrential downpour sent water pouring into the velodrome through leaks in the roof, and so many people fainted during the ceremony’s dress rehearsal that organisers were forced to distribute 14,000 salt tablets in an attempt to avoid a repeat on the big day.

The bill for staging the Games – which escalated from an initial estimate of $124m to a final outlay of $1.5bn – took 30 years to pay off, finally being settled in December 2006. Canada became the first and so far only host nation not to win a single gold medal. The Games began with streams of athletes leaving the city, as all but two African nations eventually joined a last-minute boycott in protest at New Zealand, whose rugby side had just body-swerved a boycott to go on a tour of South Africa, being allowed to compete – “unequivocally not our concern in any way,” according to the IOC president, Lord Killanin.

New nations were joining the protest even after the Games began, with officials often not finding out until only one boxer turned up to a bout, or just one team to a football match. Both the Republic of China (Taiwan) and the People’s Republic of China (China) also withdrew, each because of problems with the other and the former so late in the day that their sailors were already on the water for the official opening of the regatta when they were beckoned back to land.

And then the Games began. 19 July, the second day of competition, started with the newspapers full of news of Comaneci’s perfect 10. Finally it seemed that attention was starting to turn away from the politics and towards the action. By the day’s end, though, the talk was only of one thing: the most infamous case of sporting skulduggery in Olympic history.

Boris Onischenko was one of the modern pentathlon’s star athletes. A three-times world champion and member of Russia’s winning team in 1972, when he was an individual silver-medallist, he was, at 38, considered likely to leave his last Games with at least one further medal. After the equestrian events Russia’s team lay fourth, with their best disciplines still to come, and Onischenko started the second day’s fencing in thrilling style.

In this part of the pentathlon, every athlete played each of the others in a round-robin competition, in what added up to 46 matches spread over a period of 12 hours. Each lasted three minutes, or until one of the contestants registered a hit, with an electronic scoreboard programmed to automatically detect when either blade found its mark. The aim was to win at least 70% of your matches, which would trigger a 1,000-point bonus, and after winning each of his first four Onischenko seemed very much on target.

The Russians faced the Britons early in the day. First he easily beat Danny Nightingale – “I was expecting to lose, he was a renowned fencer” – and next up was Adrian Parker. “Onischenko scored a hit, but we could not see how he managed it,” recalled the British team manager, Mike Proudfoot, who suspected some kind of technical malfunction. “We called an official to look at the equipment. He inspected the piste and electrical equipment, but eventually awarded a hit.” Officials put this complaint down to “early morning jitters”.

Onischenko’s fifth match was against another Briton, the 36-year-old Jim Fox. Fox and his opponent were both military men and had been competing for the best part of two decades, during which time they had built up what the Englishman considered a decent friendship. During the match, Onischenko lunged towards his rival, and Fox leapt backwards to evade his blade. Although his evasive action was successful, the scoreboard lit up. “It was,” said Fox, “like waving a magic wand.”

“Boris tried it on the wrong bloke with me,” Fox added. “I’ve been around too long to fall for it. I was watching him when he fenced against Adrian Parker and thought he was a couple of inches short when a hit was scored. I was actually going away from him when the same thing happened to me. I said: ‘Something is wrong here.’ He said: ‘Yes, I know I didn’t hit you,’ and tried to change his weapon. I wasn’t having that, not because I thought he was cheating but because I thought the weapon was faulty and might be used again. I wanted it examined.”

Although for a while the Russians claimed to have lost it, when judges examined the épée in forensic detail they discovered, buried in the handle behind a layer of leather, a complex wiring system which, when a pressure pad was depressed, automatically told the sensors that a hit had been scored. “It was a real engineering job,” said Proudfoot. “Not just a ham amateur’s effort. They had to dismantle the weapon to discover it.”

Carl Schwende, the chief of discipline for fencing, explained to the media that the offending épée had been “deliberately fabricated to show that he was winning when he was not”. “We had no choice but to disqualify him,” he said. “He’s out of the Olympics. The jury of appeal listened very carefully to Onischenko’s explanation that the equipment was not his own, but decided that his explanation was not good enough.”

Sandor Kerekes, the Olympic pentathlon competition director, said: “It was a flagrant, deliberate manipulation with the weapon. It was like catching somebody with a smoking gun standing over a dead body.”

While the judges examined Onischenko’s fiddled épée, the Russian was allowed to continue with a new, unbiased blade. During this period, he scored a perfectly respectable five wins and two losses. “Make no mistake, he is a great fencer,” said Fox. “Such terrible political pressures are put on competitors now. The need to win is too great for some people. I am absolutely shattered and so are all the Russians. We know them all well. We go drinking together. It’s the land of sport, this is.” When his ruse was revealed, Onischenko had swept from the hall, pausing only to say to Fox: “I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”

Perhaps, Fox was asked, at 38 – 10 years older than the average age of his rivals – and having only just scraped into the Russian team for the Olympics, Onischenko felt under pressure to perform. “I wonder if it preyed on his mind,” he replied. “I think it was pressure that caused it. But there is pressure on all of us, not just the eastern Europeans. It is getting out of hand. It is an absolute tragedy for Onischenko as well as for the Russian team, and for the whole sport.”

The case was viewed as further evidence of unsporting behaviour by Communist nations. In 1968, perhaps the closest the Olympics had come to this kind of scandal, the East German bobsleigh team were disqualified after being discovered taking a blow torch to their runners immediately before a race. A few days after this incident, the Associated Press would report that Russia had contacted other competing nations in an attempt to put in place an organised points-swapping exercise in the diving.

East Germany’s women swimmers, who hadn’t won a single gold in 1972, hoovered up 11 out of a possible 13 in Montreal – Kornelia Ender, who won four of them, later confessed to nobody’s great surprise that they had been receiving mysterious injections.

But despite Onischenko’s disqualification, his two team-mates were allowed to continue in the competition. Their hope of a team medal was over, but one of them, Pavel Lednev, went on to win individual silver. “I am convinced that there is no question of it being planned by the Russians or the rest of the team being involved in any way at all,” said Fox. “I am 100% convinced that the rest of them had nothing to do with this.”

“I know the coaches well and I don’t think they had anything to do with it, but who can really say who’s the culprit and who isn’t?” said Kerekes, a few days after the story broke. “Onischenko was a nice comrade. I will never get over it. I haven’t slept. I doubt if I will. To me, it’s a tremendous shock as a sportsman. You know, Monday I was sitting back in my chair thinking about my responsibilities and saying, dammit, everything is going just beautifully. Then I get this bloody call and I can’t believe it. For 20 years he has been such a tremendous athlete. Like wine, you know, he has got better with age. In the Soviet Union he is a hero, held up as an idol by the children. They have cards of him.”

As the western world delighted in Onischenko’s downfall – the papers gleefully nicknamed him “Disonischenko” – the Russians had to work out what their version of the story should be. By coincidence, the Mail’s Ian Wooldridge was in the Soviet delegation’s offices in the Olympic village when the story broke and the phone started to ring: “’Cheating?’ said the interpreter, glancing anxiously at his boss who was sitting directly under the five-foot portrait of a severe-looking Lenin. ‘What event is this you are speaking of? Of this we know nothing. Our officials are all in a meeting. Please ring back tomorrow.’ In fact, most of the officials were right there in the room, looking dead worried, as well they might. As hosts for the next Olympics in Moscow they have ducked all the recent political trouble and exercised uncustomary charm all over the place. The very last thing they wanted was to be caught fiddling the books or anything else for the sake of just another medal.”

That night, as Onischenko was collected from the athletes’ village in a private car and taken to the airport, Russian radio reported only that Onischenko “was fencing with a sword that did not meet the requirements of international rules, so a disappointing mistake has occurred”. But they knew that such pronouncements would not wash in the west. The following day, the Russian Modern Pentathlon Federation released a statement saying it “condemned this action by Boris Onischenko and expelled him from the team”. In mid-afternoon a Soviet team spokesman confirmed that he was already “back in his home town of Kiev”.

“It is a very sad matter and he will probably be stripped of all his medals and honours,” he said. “I am sure the matter will be investigated but I fear his career as a sportsman is over. The team did not know about it, and the trainers did not know about it. It is a tragedy for the entire team. These are not our methods.”

The distraction did little for Fox, whose own game fell apart. He won just 23 of his fencing contests; this was his fourth and final Olympics, and he had never done worse. “I know I’m finished, and now I’ve finished the team, too,” he told the Observer’s David Hunn that evening. “What a way to go out. They say it’s character-building, this sport. It’s a bastard.” He set another low in the following day’s shooting. With two events to go Britain lay eighth and seemed out of contention.

What happened over the following two days must rank as one of the most remarkable successes in British Olympic history. In the 300m swim Fox equalled his personal best, while Parker and Nightingale smashed theirs to lift Britain up to fifth. On the morning of the final event, a 4,000m cross-country race that was to start and end in the Olympic Stadium but was mainly to be run over the municipal golf course next door, there was some quiet optimism. “It’s our best event and we should end up quite well,” said one coach that morning. The event was brutal, and the glamorous “Olympic hostesses” positioned at the finish to greet the athletes and offer them a drink wept openly as one by one the competitors collapsed across the line in a human shower of limbs, sweat and vomit. “It was awful, just horrible,” said one later, bursting back into tears.

When sense was made of this scene, it was discovered that the British – who would of course have had an even more remote chance of success had Russia still been involved – were indeed the winners. “Although we had estimated that victory was possible it meant we all had to run as we have never done before – and on the same day,” said Fox. “It really is incredible that we pulled it off.”

Two months later word reached the west of Onischenko’s fate. He had been called before Leonid Brezhnev himself for a personal rollicking, dismissed from the Red Army, fined 5,000 roubles, stripped of all his sporting honours, and was now working as a taxi driver in Kiev. Nothing has been heard of him since.

What the Guardian said



Tuesday 20 July 1976

A Russian fencer alleged to have cheated in the modern pentathlon was expelled from the Olympic Games yesterday after officials discovered his weapon was wired to score a hit without touching his opponent.

In an astonishing incident that destroyed the Soviet Union’s chances of repeating their Munich gold medal win in the event, 38-year-old Boris Onischenko was found to have a piece of wire concealed on his épée to trigger the electronic scoring machine.

He was fighting Britain’s Jim Fox in the second round of the fencing when he took a lunge at his tall, fair-haired opponent. The Briton stepped back without being touched – and stood amazed as a light signalled the Russian has scored a hit.

Fox, 24, lodged an immediate protest and officials launched an investigation. It ended with the expulsion of Onischenko, a Munich silver medallist who has been a member of the Soviet Olympic team for 10 years.

Onischenko, who was later whisked away in a Soviet team coach, denied that the offending weapon was his. But Olympic officials decided his explanation was not good enough.

Carl Schwende, chief of discipline in charge of fencing, said: “The weapon had definitely been tampered with. Someone had wired it in such a way that it would score a winning hit without even making contact.”

The British squad’s manager, Mike Proudfoot, said they suspected that all was not well after their first bout against the Russians. “Onischenko scored a hit against Adrian Parker in the first fight and we could not see how he managed it,” Proudfoot said.

“We called over an official to look at the equipment. He inspected the piste and electrical equipment but eventually awarded the hit. Then Jim Fox met the Russian and the same thing happened. This time it was more obvious than ever that it could not have been a hit, and we asked for the épée to be looked at.”

Fox said: “It was a silly thing to do and I’m very sorry it should have happened because we are such good friends. But I am surprised that he should think he could get away with it.”

Wednesday 21 July 1976

Boris Onischenko’s disqualification was another blow for the image of modern pentathlon. At Munich, 14 competitors in the event were found to have taken a stimulant. In 1968, at Mexico City in the days before drug tests, a Swede was found to have encouraged himself to pass its severe tests of all-round skill with alcohol.

But Onischenko’s breach of the rules is far more damaging. Here was a Russian grand master of sport, aged 38, an army major, the secretary-general of the Russian Pentathlon Federation, twice national champion, a silver medallist in 1972, and a member of the national team which won the gold medal in Munich, caught using an electrical device which enabled him to register “false” hits in the fencing competition. If his épée had been wired normally a light would have flashed every time he touched an opponent, but apparently Onischenko added an extra wire to the circuit. This was controlled by a thumb button hidden under the usual leather binding so that it was impossible to detect by those who checked his weapons.

Onischenko was the favourite. What bewilders all his fellow competitors is that he is such a skilled fencer that he would have had no need to use artificial help to win the point he needed. Carl Schwende (Canada), the fencing chef de discipline, said: “This was deliberately fabricated to show that he was winning when he was not. We had no choice but to disqualify him.”

Russia have accepted that Onischenko was guilty of cheating and announced he had been expelled from the team in disgrace. In an unusually prompt response to the incident, the Russian Pentathlon Federation “acknowledged” that Onischenko had broken the rules: “The USSR Modern Pentathlon Federation condemned this action by B Onischenko and expelled him from the national team,” an official federation statement said.

Jim Fox, the British Army sergeant from Portsmouth, who made the complaint against the Russian, was more upset than anyone by the incident. Onischenko had said this would be his last Olympics. Fox had known him for 14 years. “Make no mistake. He is a great fencer. This is a catastrophe for modern pentathlon, for Onischenko, and for Russia. The sport is gone because such terrible political pressures are put on competitors now. The need to win is too great for some people.”

After the Games Fox said that Onischenko had expected to be promoted to lieutenant-colonel and to a high position in the administration of Russian sport. “I am absolutely shattered and so are all the Russians. We know them all well. We go drinking together. It’s the kind of sport this is.”

After the complaint Fox himself fenced erratically and had one or two small arguments with the judges. During the two and a half hours that Onischenko’s case was being considered, the Russian, disciplined and impassive, fenced on with another weapon and won five of his seven bouts. The Modern Pentathlon Council will meet tomorrow to discuss the matter.

Onischenko’s wiring trick isn’t unknown in fencing. It is one of the sport’s familiar practical jokes. Imre Nagy, a member of the Canadian team is quoted as saying yesterday: “A guy would rig his weapon and beat someone else in friendly competition. After it was all over, he would say that it was a gag. In international competition, especially in the Olympics, this sort of thing is unheard of. This is no joke. It is incredible to think that such a great athlete would resort to such tactics.”

Like everyone else, Nagy feels that this has undermined the whole concept of sportsmanship in fencing. “It is a sad day when we know that stricter controls will have to be taken in an electronically operated sport.” A month ago Onischenko won a fencing competition by a large margin. There were those who were wondering about that success in Montreal yesterday.

• This article was amended on 15 March 2012. The original referred to Onischenko’s weapon as a sabre and subsequently as a foil. This has been corrected.