Cheat cover art

Cheat

The Not-So-Subtle Art of Conning Your Way to Sporting Glory

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Cheat

By: Titus O'Reily
Narrated by: Titus O'Reily
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About this listen

 Mastering the not-so-subtle art of cheating in sport.

Where there's sport, there's cheating. No sport is immune; athletics, swimming, rugby, American Football, cricket, baseball, badminton, motorsports, tennis and curling. Yes, even that sport on the ice with brooms.

Almost as soon as humans started playing sport competitively, they started to cheat. They cheated to win, for the fame, for the money and sometimes for reasons that are hard to understand.

From the fiendishly clever to the outright hare brained, the borderline to the blatant, Titus O'Reily takes us through the many and varied ways athletes and countries have tried to cheat over the years.

There's the winner of the New York marathon who was driven in a car part of the way, the male basketballer whose drug test revealed he was pregnant, the Tour De France where many of the riders took the train, the Spanish Paralympic basketball team who faked being intellectually disabled to win gold at the 2000 Paralympics.

As well as sharing an alarming amount of tales involving swapping bodily fluids, Titus takes you through doping, illegal equipment, bribes, playing dirty, faking injuries, wearing disguises, dodgy referees, ball tampering, eye gouging, itching powder, licking an opponent to distract them and sending a dwarf out to bat to shrink the strike zone.

Just as sport has become more sophisticated, so has cheating in sport, from state backed doping programs to tiny motors in Tour De France bikes.

What does this say about us, that we cheat with such regularity and creativity? Will technology help stop cheating or will it only make it worse?

Mastering the not-so-subtle art of cheating is a hilarious trip through the history of cheating in sport, and a handy how-to-guide for the professional athlete in your family.©2020 Titus O'Reily (P)2020 Penguin Random House Australia Sports Witty Funny Comedy Injury
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A humorous and thoroughly researched account on the history of cheating in sports. From the bizarre to the criminally deceptive, this book will make you look at sport in another light. The sports covered range from amateur to professional and cover all eras so this will be appeal to any sports lover.

A must buy for sports lovers

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Cheat is an entertaining read that combines humor and insight, showing us the complexity of integrity in sports and the sheer audacity of Some athletes.

if you love sports you'll love this

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Another grey Titus O’Reily book. I love the mispronunciations on words. It gives the listener a sense of authenticity. That Titus is one of us!

It seems as though he only scratched the surface though. Sport is so rife with fixes and cheats, that he could have several volumes and it would only just cover half of it.

It’s great to know though that it’s not just Australians who cheat, but all nationalities. All you need is competition between two humans.

Another winner

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The content of the book is very entertaining and well researched by Titus. It also contains some of his unique comedy style to give it a bit of extra substance and it generates some chuckles for what should be a serious and dry subject. The only fault I can suggest is that some of the humour is lost in the delivery as while usually Titus thrives on his timing and spontaneous wit reading an audio book is a totally different ball game. His narration was more than satisfactory but when compared to a book narrated by one of the star audio actors I normally listen to you notice the difference. Still overall I would highly recommend this book.

An entertaining book and well researched

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Really interesting stories and I was taken aback with the level of cheating that goes on in sports. Also taken back with the level of inaction and incompetence of authorities in taking action. This was a compelling listen. I was engaged right to the end.

Surprisingly Good

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A great insight into a topic I knew very little about. However the narration is a bit below par and a lot of the pronunciation is off putting particularly of foreign names and places. The dry sarcasm was enjoyable except for the left wing political support.

Enjoyed it...mostly

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I love Titus and his dry Dad humour, but this book wasn't thorough enough. With the vast motorised sporting examples, only one from WRC was briefly mentioned. There are others missing too. But, with the content included, it was fantastic and shocking at the same time.

Good But Missing Many Sports

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Titus has done it again. Delivered in a typical Titus fashion with all the background work you would expect from this legend of a human.

He does it again

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probably a good book to read, to listen to was awful. Titus stick to writing, don't read it. made my ears bleed but I persevered. tip...... Australia and Australians both have the letter 'l' in it. austraya?!

painful

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Good subject and interesting content, but I winced every time I heard the wrong pronunciation of names and towns i know well. It wouldn't have taken much research to correct.

So many bad pronunciations.

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