8. Gender mix-up
This one happened a long time ago, but the sheer absurdity of the scandal forces us to include it in our list of 11 biggest Olympic scandals of all time. The year is 1932 and games are being held in Los Angeles. Stella Walsh (known as Stanisława Walasiewicz at the time) manages not only to win the gold in the 100m sprint but to tie the current world record multiple times. Four years later in Berlin, Stella Walsh loses to Helen Stephens, who gets accused of being a man. After submitting to genital inspection test, Stephens verifies her gender and gets to keep the gold. What’s ironic in this story is that Stella Walsh was actually the one that could have been accused of the same. After her death in 1980, it was concluded that Walsh was intersex, and ever since, the International Olympic Committee has started to drop gender determination tests.
