At Least 20 Olympians Caught Fudging the Rules, Doping, or Dating Neo-Nazis

Collins, earlier this summer, racing against American Tyson Gay. (Julian Finney/Getty Images)

Earlier this morning, the small Caribbean island of St. Kitts and Nevis was forced to send its second Olympian home in disgrace: Former 100-meter world champion Kim Collins was dismissed from the Games for "repeated absences from training sessions and also for refusing to respond to repeated phone calls and emails by team manager and coaches." As it turns out, Collins was sneaking out of the Olympic Village to see his wife, and he's not ashamed to admit it. "They're asking me to abandon my wife for the team," he later told BBC Radio. "It's not going to happen." A few hours later he tweeted that "even men in prison get their wives to visit."

So far, at least 19 other Olympians have been disqualified or asked to leave London — and for less cute reasons than missing their wives. Here's the shame-laced roundup:

Greek triple jumper Paraskevi Papachristou — described by Reuters as "a blonde-haired athlete who sports a navel piercing" — was ejected Wednesday after tweeting: "With so many Africans in Greece... the West Nile mosquitoes will at least eat homemade food!!!"Swiss soccer player Michel Morganella was quickly sent packing after he besmirched the entire South Korean nation via Twitter. What he wrote roughly translates as, "I want to beat up all South Koreans, you can all go burn. Bunch of mongoloids."Brazilian rower Kissya Cataldo da Costa was temporarily suspended for failing a July 12 drug test, and forced to drop out of at least one event.Two Israeli female sailors, Vered Bouskila and Gil Cohen, were disqualified from taking part in a second race after a Danish appeal was accepted. What exactly the Danes were complaining about is not quite clear.A referee disqualified Iranian boxer Ali Mazaheri, champion of the 2006 and 2007 Asian Games, after he received three warnings for persistent holding in just 56 seconds. After the match Mazaheri told reporters that, "It was a fix ... it was a set up." Although the referee was himself later suspended, the ruling was upheld, prompting tens of thousands of Mazaheri's Iranian fans to Facebook protest.German rower Nadja Drygalla voluntarily left the Olympic Village "not to be a burden for the [German] team" after it came out that her boyfriend is active in the Rostock National Socialists party, a group with documented racist, anti-Semitic, and neo-Nazi tendencies.Two members of Team GB, Victoria Pendleton and Jess Varnish, were disqualified from the women's team sprint final (in cycling) for an illegal changeover. When the announcement was made, boos ran out from British fans in the stands. Pendleton brushed it off with the remark that, "now and again rubbish things happen and it is one of those days." Mere hours later, she took the gold in Keirin, a sport we won't even try to explain.

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Obama Gives Olympians a Congratulatory Phone Call, Rubio Offers Them a Tax Break

"Thanks for your support, Mr. President. Now how about that rebate check?"

Today Michael Phelps and the five members of the U.S. women's gymnastics team got a treat when President Obama called them from Air Force One to commend them on their Olympic victory and make awkward small talk. ("I told these young ladies as I was congratulating them, how do you not bust your head every time you're on that little balance beam?" Obama said. "I couldn't walk across that balance beam.") However, the most exciting news came later in the day, when the Olympians learned that thanks to some grandstanding by Senator Marco Rubio, they might get to save a few thousand dollars on their taxes.

Rubio announced at a press conference that he's introducing a bill to make prize money won at the Olympics exempt from taxes, according to CBS News. While Olympians usually only talk about striving for the honor of winning a medal, they also earn cash payments from the U.S. Olympic Committee:  $25,000 for gold, $15,000 for silver and $10,000 for bronze. Rubio's spokesman said questions about the Olympians' taxes were brought to his attention by Grover Norquist's Americans for Tax Reform. On Tuesday the group wrote in a blog post that "American medalists face a top income tax rate of 35 percent." Using that figure, they calculated that athletes have to turn over up to $8,986 for gold, $5,385 for silver, and $3,500 for bronze. (They also have to pay taxes on the value of the medals themselves. A gold medal is estimated to be worth $675, silver is about $385, and just to add insult to injury, bronze is worth less than $5.)

Rubio offered this justification for his Olympic Tax Elimination Act:

It's unclear how adding new tax exemptions is supposed to make the tax code less complicated, and the word "extra" is also misleading. There's no special tax on Olympics earnings, the prize money and medals are just included with the rest of an athlete's income. According to Politifact, Americans for Tax Reform's suggestion that most Olympians will be giving the IRS 35 percent of their medal-related money is "mostly false." While the group's calculations may be correct for Michael Phelps, Olympians who've yet to score lucrative endorsement deals are probably earning far less, and are thus paying a lower tax rate on the money they make at the games (which many news reports didn't make clear, since apparently the media is still confused about how the tax system works).

While paying taxes certainly feels like a punishment, some would argue that it's actually patriotic. Plus, according to Politifact the "extra" tax athletes pay on their prizes would actually be balanced out by Olympians deducting things like travel fees, payments to coaches, and the cost of equiptment as business expenses. Of course, we're not saying that Olympians don't deserve a special tax exemption. Only a jerk would suggest that they should just pay the amount of taxes required by law, rather than getting a tax break for being inspiring and lovable.

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