Sweden knew Canada's Marc Kennedy was a notorious cheater.
So they set up a camera at the 'hog line' to record it.
And caught him doing it at the Olympics.
this post was submitted on 15 Feb 2026
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I never understood how someone can feel good about themselves after they win thru cheating
Like the psychology doesn't make sense to me, is it the thrill of not getting caught that they're chasing, instead of the glory of a hard won triumph?
I think the usual logic is that "everyone else is doing it". And often they are right about that. For example, various forms of blood doping in top level cycling. The standards orgs running the competitions put more focus on arbitrary rules about the bicycles themselves than safety or doping, the latter is just a PR issue for them. So if you want to be "the best", you either accept coming in 28th place naturally or top 5 doing what everyone else does.
You need to win to earn money and sponsordeals from professional sports. So it’s just the same mix of cognitive dissonance and calvinism that allows many people to feel like they deserve their success over others who work just as hard if not harder.
What does Calvinism have to do with anything?
Calvinism promotes the idea that if you experience success, then it’s because god has made you successful because you’re a good person. It’s the driving force between the equivalence people perceive between their economic success and their values. If a sports team wins by cheating, they still get the money and feeling of success and thus feel like good people because of the combination of cognitive dissonance and calvinist beliefs that are still strongly present in western society.
I might be able to get in the right headspace to explain it in a bit.
Like, I don't really get it either, but I know it starts with "I want to win" not "I want to get away with something". Then a small thrill on the "I just got away with something yay".
In terms of not understanding it, there's alignment along AuDHD/neurotypical/ASPD axes for attitudes about cheating (and, inherently, about capitalism).
(this is going to involve some brain chemistry modification so it might be a bit, hopefully I remember and come back to this)
Hoo boy, here we go. Feeling it now. Or, at least able to emulate feelings of it. Spoilered/nested for ramble containment.
Why do people cheat in sports?
A documented train of thought about cheating in sports.
I'm big. I'm the biggest guy in the room. I'm gonna boss that guy^[you, but this character doesn't even think about you as, like, a person] around because he's smaller than me. I'm big and loud and in charge. I get what I want.
::: spoiler Why? We're animals. Competition is natural. Every species competes. Nature is absolutely brutal and tiger does not concern himself with the feelings of the gazelle.
:::spoiler Why do? I need to eat. I have to get food. I have to hunt. I have to gather.
::: spoiler Why people? Life proceates. We're a familial species. We have to take care of our young.
::: spoiler Why do? We need to gather resources. We are not bathed in nutrient slop. Effort must be expended.
::: spoiler Why do people? Oh wow, that is a lot of fruit. I can't eat all that. I should let my family know there's fruit here. Hey, everybody, FRUIT!
Community happens. It's natural, inevitable.
Why do people win?
Interaction happens. Choose your own adventure:
FIGHT
NO. I'M GOING TO EAT THIS FRUIT.Winner gets fruit. Survival of the fittest. Competition.
Flight
Yikes! I'll go get other fruit. Hopefully.Hopefully there's more fruit.
Freeze
Oh, holy shit holy shit holy shit please just take the fruit I don't want to fight holy shit please don't notice me.I really need that fruit and I really need to not get hurt what the fuck what the fuck what do I do?
Probably gonna get hit at this point.
Fawn
YOU GOT IT! FRUIT'S ALL YOURS! Want me to get you more fruit? I can get you as much fruit as you want.Please don't hit me.
Sometimes you get hit. Sometimes you don't. You'll never know which is which, but at least you can keep gathering fruit.
Even if you don't get to keep all of it.
Even if you don't get to keep any of it.
Friend
There are a lot of thought possibilities here, and even more responses. I'm not gonna write a whole dialog tree (yet).Oh, shit, this guy needs fruit. I wouldn't like needing fruit. Hey, yeah, you can have this fruit. I can probably find more.
Oh shit, this guy needs fruit. Needing fruit sucked. I have a bunch of fruit. I can't eat it all. Have some fruit.
Oh, shit, this guy needs fruit. No one should have to go without fruit. Hey, yeah, you can have some of this fruit; it's not a ton but we can find more fruit together.*
You cooperate. A society is formed.
Fɪɢʜᴛ
Nᴏ. I NEED Tʜɪꜱ Fʀᴜɪᴛ. Mʏ Fᴀᴍɪʟʏ NEEDS Tʜɪꜱ Fʀᴜɪᴛ. I ᴡɪʟʟ ɴᴏᴛ ʟᴇᴛ Yᴏᴜ ʜᴀᴠᴇ Tʜɪꜱ Fʀᴜɪᴛ.Could go either way. But, trying is the most important part. There's not enough fruit for everyone. You owe it to yourself, to your family, to your community. You must compete.
Fuck
SplooshWhy do people cheat?
Taking someone else's fruit was a lot easier than finding fruit
I'm just going to do that from now on. Take fruit. I'll do anything I can to get better at taking fruit.Lots of reasons. Lots of types of cheating. Steroids, rule bending, rule breaking. Lots of drives.
::: spoiler Why sports?
Ok so like there are characters, internal voices, trains of thought, concepts flying around. Trying to organize.
So, we have these dudes. There's "Big" dude, who is all ALL THIS STUFF IS MINE, DO WHAT I SAY and then we have ʙɪɢ dude who is like "no". And "Big" guy swings. And gets his ass handed to him in response.
ʙɪɢ wins the fight. But didn't like it. And doesn't want to fight. And doesn't even understand the need to fight at all because like he totally shares all his food and would rather just share. But he's gonna have to fight again.
So ʙɪɢ being a nerd is like, "hey, next guy who has to fight me, I won't, like, actively try to kill you as long as you don't actively try to kill me".
Yay. Sports.
Why do people sports?
If there's been an established need to be a winner of a fight, and you'd rather neither of you die, you need rules. An agreement. And penalties for not keeping the agreement. "Sorry, but just this one time I will be forced to go all out." But, like, real. You beat the shit out of the other person. Still not enough to kill them. Probably. The first time.spoiler Why do people win sports?
Even fighting with that caveat is still fucking awful. So, innovate. Find ways to not fight but still determine winner.
Could be better technique. Could be more strength. Could be more accuracy. Could be more speed. Could be better rules. Could be better enforcement of the rules/agreement.
::: spoiler Why do people want to sports? Could be fun. Could be need. Could be pride.
::: spoiler Why do people want to win sports?
Pride, drive, grind, glory, fun. Feels good?
::: spoiler Why do people cheat to win? Winning is good. Winning means you're better. If these drugs will make me better, I will use them. If this technique is better, and the rule against it is never enforced, I must use it. It is better. I must be better.
::: spoiler Why do people cheat to win sports? The previous, combined with a lack of understanding of the source of the rules of sport. Or combined with the understanding of the limits of enforcement within the sport.
The UFC "community" hellhole has several different takes on eye gouging.
These all support cheating. These all lead to lines of reasoning that support cheating.
The only take I haven't come across is:
Why do people want to cheat to win at sports?
Everyone else is doing it
If this is true, adapt the rules. Sports are allowed to change.
They want to be better, more, to grow
Internal drive. Important, good. Placing more value on this than on the sport, not so much.They want to be the best
Still not bad, from my perspective, because I feel this very deeply. I acknowledge that's not a valid reason, "I feel this because I feel this". It's not at all a universal feeling or experience. Emotion, not logic.They want to be better than everyone else
I swear this is different than the previous statement. Pride vs envy. Pride is good. Envy is bad.They can get away with it
Blame the refs, blame the sport, blame the fans, blame whatever it takes to disown the conscious choice to cheatThey have to because everyone else is cheating
The response to a lack of enforcement of the rules is not to break the same rule yourself; that just propagates the problem.The solution is to Eɴꜰᴏʀᴄᴇ the rules yourself. The rules no longer apply. There must be a Pᴇɴᴀʟᴛʏ. The Pᴇɴᴀʟᴛʏ is that THE RULES NO LONGER APPLY.
There must be a reminder of why the rules were put into place.
IF I DON'T CHEAT HE WILL
This is the most broken, problematic one. It's lashing out in fear. It's a complete misunderstanding of the purpose and benefits of sports.Cheating is fun
Folks like getting away with things. Some part of the brain produces happy chemicals. People chase happy chemicals. Practically an addiction.I hope someone, somewhere is finding this useful. I did. It was nice getting these thoughts recorded.
how someone can feel good about themselves after they win thru cheating
I have cheated, gotten away with it, and felt good about it. I have cheated, gotten caught, and felt bad about it. I have cheated, gotten away with it, and felt bad about it. I have cheated, gotten caught, and felt good about it.
I have lost a game when someone else cheated, and felt mad about it. I have gotten beat by a cheater, and been impressed by it.
I have lost when cheating would have let me win, and never been penalized, and regretted following the rules. I have lost, when cheating would have penalized me, and been proud that I didn't. I have cheated, gotten caught, and been proud that I took the red card to give my team the chance to win. I have watched others cheat and accept their penalty and still lost.
There's a ton going on. So many reasons, so many avenues, so much context. We can never truly know what's going on in someone else's head.
My personal drivers would be self/team/community pride, fear, and desire to be sneaky. My counters are respect for the game/other team/sport/rules/agreement/society, fear of getting caught, shame, and general lack of desire to put my success ahead of that of others.
These (and others) will have different weights from person to person. Nature and nurture both come into play.
My own brother used to cheat at videogames. He built a lag switch connected to his Playstation, which he would flip during SOCOM. I don't know how it worked but it caused other players to lag heavily. Sometimes he would flip it then just walk around shooting opponents in the face. I have never been able to understand why this would be fun or feel good.
He was huge into Diablo 2 at one point (I was too, but I wasn't playing it when he was). He would IM people and send them a program to duplicate their items. What it actually did was make them take off all their gear, drop it, then quit the game. He made so much off this scam, he had a mule character that had an inventory full of Stone of Jordan rings. These were the de facto high level currency because they were very rare, only took up one slot, and gold wasn't worth much.
One day he got his. I heard him absolutely losing his shit, screaming and crying from the family PC. He got scammed and lost everything. I'm not proud of this but it made me feel so, so good.
Because the only way it matters is the PR afterwards if 'caught', and even then everybody knows that everyone is cheating in some small and hidden ways that leagues can't really catch it all, and only really can go after the blatant stuff and/or stuff that "looks bad" to normal people (see: doping, despite every single person you see on the field, court, pitch being genetic freaks of nature to begin with). Cheating and bending the rules in a way that they clearly weren't meant to bend is just a part of sports. If you follow a major motorsport, I can tell you that not a single team has put a legal car on the grid, in fact I would be shocked if someone did put a fully legal car on the grid.
It's a large part of why I laugh at e-sports followers when they act shocked and appalled that someone would cheat when anyone could've told them that its just a natural part of being a sport.