Cheating and sports: they go together like Siegfried & Roy. OK, bad example. Like Trinidad & Tobago, McGwire and creatine.

In fact, it's ingrained in most of us. Who hasn't shaved a shot or two off their golf scorecard, or tried to bribe a French judge from time to time?

But the last few weeks have raised the spectre of widespread cheating to new highs.

The scandal over BALCO, the California firm now being investigated for its role in designing the steroid THG, has opened up an an athletes' list that reads like a who's who from ESPN's files.

So to put this recent news in context, Sports Online has come up with Cheaters' Hall of Fame. We'd say 'enjoy' but it's a pretty motley crew...

DANNY ALMONTE | 1919 WHITE SOX |
EAST GERMAN OLYMPIANS | TONYA HARDING |
BEN JOHNSON | ROSIE RUIZ |
SALÉ & PELLETIER | SPANISH PARALYMPIANS |
TOUR DE FRANCE CYCLISTS | STELLA WALSH

Danny Almonte's edge on the mound? Puberty. (File photo)

Danny Almonte guided his Bronx, NY, baseball squad into the 2001 Little League World Series with a string of dominant pitching performances. He even tossed a perfect game in the opener. However, his team was later stripped of its multiple regional championships and third-place showing at the 2001 LLWS when it was revealed Almonte was 14 years old, two years older than the LLWS age limit. (What was the first clue -- Almonte's towering teenaged frame or his five o'clock shadow?)

The player who had scouts salivating over his Pedro Martinez-like skills was dominating kids two years his junior. The scandal reached beyond Little League circles, turning the spotlight on parents and kids who will fudge the truth for a shot at glory.

Looking nothing like Ray Liotta, Shoeless Joe remains a Hall of Fame pariah despite his eye-popping stats. (File photo)

Early in 20th century America, baseball was so much more than just a game. It was a national institution. Imagine the public's shock and outrage when eight players from the Chicago White Sox were allegedly bribed by gamblers to throw the 1919 World Series to the Cincinnati Reds.

The eight implicated players, among them the great "Shoeless" Joe Jackson, were later acquitted on criminal charges. They were, however, banned from baseball for life.

The incident tarnished the league's reputation, removed some of the innocence and lustre surrounding America's pastime, and has become a benchmark for cheating inside and outside of baseball since.

How does a country of fewer than 17 million people double its Olympic output from 20 to 40 gold medals in just four years? Drugs, and plenty of 'em

The East Germans became a sporting powerhouse in the 1970s and '80s, rivalling the much larger United States and Soviet Union. Thousands of East German athletes were given performance-enhancing steroids in an effort to prove East German superiority over the West. Many thought they were simply taking vitamins.

The special pills worked. East Germans were a mighty force in amateur sport, particularly in the pool. But with the medals and titles came the negative health side effects, such as hormonal changes and organ damage. A German court later found ex-East German sports boss Manfred Ewald and his medical director, Manfred Hoeppner, culpable for what it called "systematic and overall doping in [East German] competitive sports" until the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989.

One of Canada's greatest sports moments turned into the most infamous example of Olympic cheating ever. (File photo)

It appears that Johnson became the goat for all.

Salé and Pelletier received their upgraded medal, but more importantly, the Skategate scandal of '02 helped pave the way for judging reforms.

Talk about sinking to new depths in order to reach the top of the podium.

The Spanish intellectually-disabled basketball team captured gold at the 2000 Sydney Paralympics with a stellar performance on the court.

But the glory soon faded when the Spanish Paralympic Committee later discovered 10 of the 12 team members had no mental deficiency. Players had to return their medals and the scandal helped lead to a complete overhaul of the Paralympic movement.

The International Paralympic Committee (IPC) eventually scrapped the athletes-with-an-intellectual-disability category, deciding that determining athlete eligibility was too difficult.

Enthusiasts say the Tour de France certainly is the biggest, hardest, most gruelling race there is, a prize so precious that cyclists will do anything to win. And they have.

In the past, riders have scattered broken glass and fans have tossed nails on the road to confound rivals. And that's just for starts.

In the 1960s, riders attempted to gain a competitive edge with amphetamines and alcohol. In doing so, Britain's Tim Simpson lost his life during the 1967 Tour.

Some say cycling faced a near death following the 1998 doping scandal in which French officials caught an employee of the Festina cycling team with a carload of performance-enhancing drugs, including erythropoietin (EPO) - a hormone that helps the blood carry more oxygen, letting you go faster and longer on your two wheels.

Following an arrest in the case, six of Festina's nine riders conceded they had used performance-enhancing drugs, including current Credit Agricole team leader Christophe Moreau. Later that year, he tested positive for anabolic steroids.

In early 2002, Italy's Stefano Garzelli, leader of the Vini Caldirola team, tested positive for traces of probenecid, a diuretic that can be used to mask other drugs. And Spanish cyclist Igor Gonzalez de Galdeano was banned from this past summer's Tour de France after a test during the 2002 event found excessive levels of an anti-asthma drug.

Maybe the biggest race of all lies in the testers trying to outsmart the cheaters.

In her time, Polish-American sprinter Stella Walsh was one of the fastest women on the planet. Born Stanislawa Walasiewiczowna on Apr. 3, 1911 in Wierzchowina, Poland, she moved to Cleveland with her family when she was two, but represented her birth nation at the 1932 and 1936 Olympic Games. She won the gold in the 100-metres in 1932, and took the silver four years later.

Walsh set 20 world records and won 41 AAU titles in events such as sprints, long jump and discus throw, and after her long and illustrious career, she was inducted into the U.S. Track and Field Hall of Fame in 1975.

Tragically, five years later she was shot and killed outside a Cleveland shopping mall. Police autopsies revealed Walsh had male genitals and both male and female chromosomes - a condition known as mosaicism. A secret she managed to conceal since her childhood was out: "she" was a "he."