Despite their almost superhuman athletic prowess,
Olympic competitors are still people, and people have flaws, make mistakes,
and sometimes get themselves into very serious trouble. Here are some Olympians of the past who,
as of July 2021, spend their time not in training facilities, but instead, in prison.
Competing in the light-flyweight class at the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta,
Cuban wrestler Alexis Vila Perdomo was expected to do well,
having already medaled at world championship events and the Pan American Games.
He ultimately took home a bronze medal, and after the Olympics, he defected to the United States.
After serving three years in prison on an alleged attempted terrorism charge after crashing a car
into a Florida airport building, he switched sports, from wrestling to mixed martial arts,
building a respectable record of 15 wins and seven defeats.
In 2011, the body of Camilo Salazar was discovered in a remote section of the
Florida Everglades, according to Miami's Local10.
Investigators ascertained that Salazar had been carrying on an affair with Jenny Marin,
wife of Presidente Supermarket tycoon Manuel Marin, who had arranged the murder.
"This was a Lifetime movie in real life."
One of the men who helped Marin execute the plan: Perdomo, convicted in 2019 of conspiracy to commit
murder, according to NBC Miami. The former athlete received a 15-year prison sentence,
less than his associate, ex-fight promoter Roberto Isaac, who got life behind bars.
Representing the North African nation of Morocco, Hicham Bouaouiche ran steeplechase, a track and
field event that combines a straightforward foot race with hurdles and water pits. Prior
to finishing in fifth place in steeplechase at the 1997 World Championships and winning a silver
medal as part of the Moroccan team at the 1998 World Cross-Country Championships, Bouaouiche made
it to the 1996 Summer Olympics, where he placed 11th in the 3,000 meter iteration of the run.
Bouaouiche reportedly got very drunk one night in December 2000
and recruited two friends to help him rob an insurance agency office near where he was
staying in a small town in southern France. The robbery went awry, and in the chaos,
Bouaouiche killed a police officer in pursuit. In 2004, he was sentenced to 30 years in prison.
Cycling is a very popular sport in Europe, and Austrian cyclist Stefan Denifl was among its
top competitors in the 2000s and 2010s. In one of the highest profile events in road cycling,
the sport's event at the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro,
Denifl competed but did not medal — he had to drop out of the race before he could finish.
Austrian skier Johannes Dürr appeared in a documentary for German TV in the 2010s,
admitting that he'd been part of a ring that used illegal,
athletic performance enhancing substances and techniques. That led to a probe and
raids by the Austrian Federal Criminal Police Office, which ensured Denifl's involvement.
In 2019, the cyclist was banned from competition in his sport for four years,
but he still faced criminal charges over doping. In February 2020, he admitted in a Vienna
courtroom that he'd engaged in illegal behaviors, and he was found guilty of fraud. In January 2021,
Denifl was fined the equivalent of $424,000 and sentenced to two years in prison.
South African sprinter Oscar Pistorius was born with a congenital defect that
left him without fibula bones. That led doctors to amputate both of his legs,
below the knee, just before his first birthday. Nevertheless,
Pistorius became a champion athlete, running on prosthetic, blade-like appendages made of carbon.
At the 2004 Paralympics in Athens, Pistorius won a gold medal in the 200 meter, and a bronze
in the 100, the first of a total of six top finishes. In 2012, the runner made history when
he became the first double amputee to run in the Summer Olympics, competing in the London games.
Pistorius lived on an estate outside Pretoria, South Africa, and in the early hours of
Valentine's Day 2013, he heard what he thought, as he'd later testify, was an intruder in his bathroom.
According to the Associated Press, before verifying the identity of the individual,
Pistorius opened fire, shooting through the door. There was no burglar, however - Pistorius
had shot and killed his girlfriend, model and reality TV participant Reeva Steenkamp.
Prosecutors in South Africa, however, argued that the couple had been fighting,
and that Pistorius had shot Steenkamp with murderous intent.
Pistorius was convicted of manslaughter, a ruling later overturned on appeal,
only for the athlete to be convicted in July 2016 of murder with indirect intent.
"Judge Leach has found Oscar Pistorius guilty of murder."
He received a prison sentence of six years, far less than the maximum sentence of 15 years.
Handball, a get-the-thing-into-the-net sport similar to soccer or hockey,
is extremely popular in Europe, where there are many professional leagues. Spain-born handball
star Iñaki Urdangarín played for FC Barcelona in the 1980s and 1990s, and in 1996 and 2000
he found Olympic glory - and won two bronze medals - as part of Spain's national team.
Urdangarín was already a famous athlete in Spain when he upped his celebrity quotient
even more, marrying Princess Cristina, sister of the country's King Felipe VI.
According to Handball Planet, Urdangarín ran a nonprofit called the Noos Foundation.
Via his company, prosecutors in Spain alleged, the athlete used his adjacency to the royal family
to land contracts to stage events, for which he overcharged and then stole money and hid
it in foreign accounts. In 2017, a provincial court convicted Urdangarín of embezzling the
equivalent of $7 million between 2004 and 2006, and he was sentenced to six years in prison.
In 2021, according to EuroWeekly News, the ex-athlete earned a conditional release,
spending weeknights in prison and weekends at home with his mother.
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