Lots of Russians pop up when the conversation switches to match fixing.<\/b><\/p>\n
I\u2019ve been to a lot of self-help workshops in my life, everything from a Sluts and Goddesses workshop to something called Opening the Heart. At one of these workshops we broke into an inner and outer circle. The people in the inner circle rotated to one person at a time in the outer circle and told them one thing they noticed about them.<\/p>\n
The organizers of the workshop told us not to get a swell head if one person said something wonderful about us. But they also said that if two or three people said the same thing, there\u2019s probably truth to it. If two or three people think you\u2019re funny, you probably are. If two or three people think your hairpiece looks ridiculous, it probably does.<\/p>\n
Since Nikolay Davydenko<\/b> kicked off the gambling issue in professional tennis after Betfair voided all bets on his match with Martin Vassallo-Arguello<\/b> in August, the Russian Mafia\u2019s involvement in match fixing has been mentioned at least two or three times.<\/p>\n
I\u2019m beginning to think there\u2019s truth to it.<\/p>\n
When the first reports came out about Davydenko\u2019s match, they mentioned Alimzhan Tokhtakhounov<\/b>, a Russian mafia figure who\u2019d been implicated in the bribery of ice skating judges in the 2002 Olympics in Salt Lake City. Tokhtakhounov has some connections to the Russian tennis federation. Russian player Andrei Medvedev<\/b> gave him a Mercedes Benz and Yevgeny Kafelnikov<\/b> calls him a good friend.<\/p>\n
Here\u2019s a good indication that Tokhtakhounov is a mobster: he was jailed twice in the 1970\u2019s and 1980\u2019s for parasitism. At that time it was a crime to be unemployed in Russia because the unemployed were viewed as parasites, but parasitism also describes the mafia perfectly. They make a living by skimming money off the top of other people’s work.<\/p>\n
Kafelnikov actually preceded Davydenko in the suspicious match department. Betting on a first round match between Kafelnikov and Fernando Vicente<\/b> in 2003 was suspended by bookmakers because large bets were placed on Vicente even though he\u2019d lost his eleven previous matches. Curiously, Betfair was the only betting exchange that stayed open throughout that match.<\/p>\n
Why didn\u2019t Kafelnikov\u2019s match kick off the gambling controversy instead of Davydenko\u2019s match? Why didn\u2019t the ATP create a gambling czar and hire experts to monitor betting patterns in 2003?<\/p>\n
I can think of a few reasons. The money wagered on tennis was nowhere near as great in 2003 and it is now and online betting exchanges have a lot to do with that. Also, players didn\u2019t come forward in 2003 and say that they\u2019d been approached by people wanting them to influence the outcome of a match. Given the number of players who\u2019ve come forward since the Davydenko match, you have to think that there wasn\u2019t widespread match fixing in 2003 because we\u2019d have heard something about it.<\/p>\n