Top 10 politicians who freeload on athletes' success

Richie McCaw holds the Bledisloe Cup with New Zealand Prime Minister John Key and Dan Carter. Photo / Getty Images

Don't you just love it when a picture appears in your paper of a grinning politician with one hand on a trophy and his other arm around the shoulders of the winning captain?

Ah yes, the warm fuzzies take over, you feel an inner glow, safe in the knowledge your country's leader is so firmly behind the brave lads out in the middle. No cheap political point-scoring here - no sir-ee.

They've even made a film about it, Invictus, where history is rewritten to make Nelson Mandela the key figure in the 1995 Rugby World Cup victory (no mention of who might be playing the role of Suzie the Waitress).

But Mandela is Mandela. A god among men. Others, however, who use sport as a political vehicle are harder to defend.

1 Adolf Hitler

Berlin Olympics, 1936

Footage of the Berlin Olympics shows an uncanny parallel between the sporting carnival and a Nuremberg rally.

These games were designed as a demonstration of the superiority of the Aryan race and to that end Germany did not select Jews or Gypsies in their team.

Jesse Owens did much to disprove the theory of the Aryan as superior athlete but it is wrong to suggest Hitler snubbed him as has become a popular, although incorrect, belief.

Hitler in fact shook Owen's hand in congratulation, although Albert Speer's memoirs revealed he was privately less than enthused by the black athlete's success.

Chalk one up for the little guy, too. Jack Lovelock, who propagandist film-maker Leni Riefenstahl paid particular attention to in Olympia as she believed him the almost perfect embodiment of athleticism, lowered his flag several metres before he should have during the march past, seen by some as a deliberate snub to the Fuhrer.

2 Benito Mussolini World Cup, Italy, 1934

You only need to look at the host stadium for the final of this World Cup to see how successfully Mussolini and black-shirted cohorts hijacked this tournament. Italy beat Czechoslovakia 2-1 at the wonderfully named Stadium of the National Fascist Party.

A quarter-final was also played at Stadio Benito Mussolini, in Turin.

When the players were not playing at monuments to ideology, they were being constantly reminded of the virtues of fascism, virtues that were seemingly endorsed by the home side's eventual triumph.

Il Duce was a regular spectator in Rome and met twice with Ivan Eklind, the Swedish referee who is said to have made a number of decisions that worked in the Azzurri's favour.

3 Mobutu Sésé Seko

Rumble in the Jungle, 1974

During his 32 years in charge of Zaire, now the Democratic Republic of Congo, Mobutu distinguished himself as a man who knew how to deal with tricky problems. Torture, exile, bribery and (very) public executions, Mobutu had all the bases covered.

He considered himself a strongman of the highest order so it was only natural that he should forge a coalition with Don King to bring two of the world's other great strongmen, Muhammad Ali and George Foreman, to Zaire for what is now referred to in legend as the Rumble in the Jungle.

Mobutu, who featured in the documentary When We Were Kings, was the only man who would put up the then astronomical figure of US$5 million for each fighter that King demanded.

Mobutu, wanting to expand the image of the nation of Zaire, put up the nation's money to do so, money it could probably have better spent on a range of public reforms from basic healthcare, sanitation and education (but that's by the by).

Ali apparently rationalised this by saying: "Some countries go to war to get their names out there, and wars cost a lot more than $10 million." Profound.

4 Jorge Rafael Videla

World Cup, Argentina, 1978

The World Cup came to the troubled South American country at the apex of its "National Reorganisation Process", a military junta best recognised by its less pragmatic title - The Dirty War.

Desperate to win some favourable press, Videla curbed some of the more extreme excesses of the regime, which might have included executing nuns or anyone else displaying leftist tendencies.

It was also important in the eyes of the military for the home side to put up a good showing, which meant nothing less than winning.

Dark rumours fester that several pesos switched hands between Argentina's rulers and Peru's players, before their match in which Argentina had to win by four clear goals to qualify for the final ahead of Brazil.

Lo and behold, Argentina won 6-0 with Peru's Argentine-born keeper Ramon Quiroga in particular having a difficult match between the sticks.

The Dutch, whom Argentina beat 3-1 in a terrific, yet controversial, final, publicly wondered whether attending the tournament had legitimised the junta.

Johan Cryuff, the Netherlands genius, did not attend, having retired in 1977, and many believed this was his way of snubbing Argentina's military.

He would claim 30 years later, however, that it was a kidnap attempt on his family, not the junta, that turned him off international soccer.

5 Uday Hussein

Iraq soccer team, 1986-2003

Mr Uday, as his subjects fearfully referred to him, used Iraq's national team as his personal plaything.

When they won, which was more often than you would think, he took the people's cheers as a sign of personal affection for him. When they lost he sought revenge.

In extreme cases, players would find themselves incarcerated. In the middle of the day, in baking heat, they would be forced to play soccer with regulation-sized balls ... made out of concrete.

If he was feeling less sadistic, 12-hour push-up sessions were deemed a great way of building upper body strength, all under the harsh sun while wearing military fatigues.

His players were encouraged to make their passes stick. He would keep count of the ones that went astray and after the game would have his bodyguards pin the wanton player's arms down and punch or slap the offender in the face, commensurate with how many poor passes he made.

It was usually Shiites who were on the receiving end of Uday's sadism.

Despite producing the most talented players out of Baghdad's ghettos, Uday used his influence to promote less-skilled Sunnis to the team.

6 John Vorster the Basil D'Oliveira affair, 1968

D'Oliveira was a coloured South African who emigrated to Britain in search of the opportunity to play international cricket denied him in his homeland.

After scoring a century in the fifth test against Australia in 1968, he seemed a monty to be picked for the tour to South Africa in 1968-69.

Former Prime Minister Alec Douglas-Home, then president of the MCC, had travelled to South Africa to receive assurances from Prime Minister Vorster that there would be no preconditions on whom they could select.

Vorster agreed to this, but left a big out by saying that would be the case as long as the selections were not "politically inspired".

D'Oliveira was not selected, to the outrage of many, but was included when another player was ruled out through injury.

This gave Vorster all the ammunition he needed. Claiming that D'Oliveira's eleventh-hour inclusion was politically inspired, he launched a PR blitz against the MCC, saying that their selection of D'Oliveira was evidence of a conspiracy against the regime and the Afrikaner people.

His "tough" stance made him a hero of his own people.

7 Rob Muldoon

Springboks Tour, 1981

Following the black African nations' boycott of the Montreal Olympics the Gleneagles Agreement was signed which effectively ended sporting contact with South Africa.

Muldoon's refusal to bar the Springboks from touring in 1981 was seen as a contravention of that agreement though the National Party leader disputed this.

That set the scene for a bloody winter, which divided the country like no other sporting event before or after.

Muldoon was firmly pro-tour, using the oft-ridiculed "sport and politics should not mix" non-argument. Cunningly, however, Muldoon painted tour protesters as anti-establishment pinkos (though in reality they came from all walks of life) who were just using the tour as an excuse to have a crack at the brave lads on the thin blue line.

This endeared him to a largely conservative populace who a) loved rugby, and b) hated social disorder.

It is a matter for conjecture but it is thought that Muldoon's uncompromising stance played a large part in the increasingly unpopular National Party winning the 1981 general election.

8 Nero

Olympic Games, Olympia,

67 AD

A Roman Emperor who received mixed reviews, Nero shamelessly used the AD67 Olympics to bolster his public image.

Entered in the chariot races, the Formula One of the Julio-Claudian age, Nero fell from his 10-horsepower vehicle and, according to contemporary reports, was injured quite badly.

That did not work out quite as planned, then, but Nero was, along with being an accomplished lyre player, a proponent of athletics, often staging big events to keep the good folk of Rome entertained.

One of his less edifying spectacles was, reputedly, the pairing of Christians and wild animals in an enclosed space as curtainraisers, as the Romans looked for scapegoats after the great fire of AD64.

9 George W. Bush

He pegged political capital on the mismatch that was shock and awe, but before gracing the White House, the man who introduced the seventh-inning stretch to Middle Eastern affairs once owned the Rangers.

10 Win and the PM smiles with you

Any politician (and we're looking at you John Key, who swigged from the Bledisloe Cup ignoring warnings about sharing drink vessels) who gatecrashes the dressing rooms of a winning team for cheesy photo-ops.

Those rictus grins. Those limp-wristed handshakes. It's not right.

As Winston Peters said in his column recently: "How come Kiwis only see their Prime Ministers when their teams win? Lose and the team's dressing room looks like a leper colony. Fans are loyal, win or lose."