The other day Juan Pablo Montoya, a driver for the Formula 1 team BMW-Williams, lost his driver's license. The 27-year-old Colombian exceeded the speed limit. On a road section in France, he accelerated his BMW X5 SUV to 204 km/h, while the maximum permissible speed on that section was 130 km/h. Besides losing his license, Juan Pablo now also faces a fairly substantial fine. According to police, the sum will be no less than the fine Montoya would have paid if he had exceeded the speed limit during races.
This is not about speeding on the track. There are no restrictions in Formula 1. The speed limit applies only to the pit lane - the road leading from the main track to the location of the team garages. Drivers enter it during competitions for a few seconds to refuel and change tires. According to the strict rules existing in Formula 1, one can drive along the pit lane only at a speed of no more than 80 km/h (this is recorded by special electronic devices located at the entrance to the pit lane). The fine for each prohibited km/h is $250. It turns out that if Montoya had been driving at 204 km/h on the pit lane, he would have paid $31,000.
However severe the fine for speeding on the pit lane may be, it cannot compare with the financial punishment that Michael Schumacher's team Ferrari-Marlboro suffered last year. At the Austrian Grand Prix stage, on the last lap just moments before the finish, the team management made an unexpected decision. Rubens Barrichello, the second driver leading the race, was given an order over the radio to slow down so as to let Michael pass, who needed the points more. The International Automobile Federation, under whose patronage Formula 1 takes place, presented Schumacher's team with a bill for this flagrantly unsportsmanlike behavior: a fine of one million dollars. Michael, by the way, then refused to take first place, nobly yielding it to Barrichello.
Fines in professional sports are generally a common and widespread matter. The lives of football players, hockey players, basketball players, and tennis players are regulated not only by strict regimes and rules, but also by the dollar. While adding millions to their bank accounts, pros also "earn" fines with quite a substantial number of zeros. These funds, it should be noted, then go to various charitable purposes. Moreover, any offense is punished. If a player of the Washington Capitals of the National Hockey League, for example, forgets to take his stick from the locker room, he loses $100. A footballer of Spanish Celta must pay a fine of €10 for every minute of lateness to training. If a professional athlete allows himself a more serious violation, the punishment becomes more tangible for his wallet.
Fabien Barthez, goalkeeper of the French national team and Manchester United, lost $43,000 (by the way, his weekly club salary) for coming to training sluggish and sleep-deprived. His coach, the honorable Sir Alex Ferguson, was so strict because he learned that the reason for Fabien's appalling form was his stay with friends in one of Manchester's bars until four in the morning. This cannot be called a professional attitude, and therefore the guilty Barthez did not even dispute the decision of his mentor, realizing that in case of objection he could lose a much larger amount.
Coaches, however, are also fined. When Pat Riley, the coach of Miami, a team of the National Basketball Association, after his club's defeat in a match with the New York Knicks accused the referees of bias, calling them "comedians," a special NBA commission fined the rebel $50,000. For similar unflattering statements about referees in the press, by decision of the disciplinary committee of the National Hockey League, fines of $30,000 were forced to pay the coaches of two NHL clubs - Brian Burke from the Vancouver Canucks and Michael Milbury from the New York Islanders. The famous boss of the NHL team Detroit Red Wings, Scotty Bowman, was fined $10,000 for attacking a reporter of the Detroit Free Press newspaper during an interview when he asked some pointed question. In the directly opposite case - from unwillingness to meet with a journalist - the world number one, Lleyton Hewitt, suffered. Having refused, on the eve of a tournament in American Cincinnati, to give a scheduled interview to a commentator of a popular sports TV channel, Lleyton was fined $100,000 by the Association of Tennis Professionals (ATP). Moreover, the whole story received a very negative connotation in the press. This, of course, did not benefit Hewitt, who is already not liked by sponsors for his unpredictable temper. Andre Agassi was fined by the ATP in the amount of $80,000 for "indecisiveness": he refused too late to participate in the Tennis Masters Series-Canada tournament...
Often, for roughness on the field, athletes are punished so severely that yellow or even red cards look like mere flowers. The disciplinary commission of the English Football Association fined Arsenal player Dennis Bergkamp $12,000 for excessive harshness during a game. Darren Woodson, a player of the Dallas team of the American National Football League (NFL), was forced to pay $75,000 because during a match he hit his opponent Darrell Jackson so hard that the latter was sent to the hospital immediately after the game. Brian Dawkins, a player of the NFL club Philadelphia, lost $50,000 after he inflicted an injury on one of his opponents during a game that prevented him from playing until the end of the season.
The NFL is already beginning to fine football players in dollars even for talking on the field. Such a fine - in the amount of $5,000 - was awarded, for example, to Rex Jackson of the Tampa team. When his coach Jon Gruden was asked to comment on the situation with fines in the NFL, he replied: "I will not say a word on this topic, because I am afraid that I will be fined again."
But you shouldn't think that under the threat of fines, the pros become veritable lambs. Many, like, for example, Wimbledon champion Goran Ivanisevic of Croatia, having paid their dues, went back to their old tricks: throwing rackets, arguing with umpires, swearing on court in their native language in the hope that the officials and especially the audience would not understand what they were saying... Goran, incidentally, likes to joke that over his career he managed to become an ATP sponsor by paying thousands of dollars in fines for his 'antics'. The Croatian explains that without such an 'outlet' he would not have lasted so long on the professional tour. So at times, monetary fines become a kind of cold shower for athletes, a permanent attribute of a professional career.