Russians are messing with sports. That sentence sounds weird, but it’s true. Without hopping to far into politics (we are sticking to sports), we have heard about Russians spreading fake news and influencing Americans on social media for the last year. It is kind of like a guerilla marketing campaign, except instead of getting you interested in a stupid Kickstarter, it is funded by millions of rubles to influence you.
If you rewind a year, you might have seen some offhand mentions that certain political Twitter trends were originating in weird cities in Russia. That was easily brushed off, as voters were of course in America.