The season of fog and ripe fruit, the best friend of the Bowden jacket. Leaves fall from the trees, aglow in color, and make their way straight onto the train tracks. Autumnal light peeks out at sharp angles, a dazzling reminder that it’s always too early to ditch your sunglasses.
At this time of year, sports fans’ thoughts naturally turn to one of the great annual tournaments.
We’re talking, of course, about the World Conqueror Championship, which generated more media attention last week than the England men’s and women’s cricket teams combined. Young children are usually obsessed with the shiny brown treasures picked up from the sidewalk. But recent events have proven that adults also outsmart pranksters.
If you manage to miss the story – how exactly? – The headline is that newly crowned men’s world champion, 82-year-old David Jakins, is accused of cheating. The runner-up was incredulous when his forces were shattered on impact during the match. When Jackens was asked to dig out his pockets, he was found in possession of a steel conker painted to look like the real thing.
The hero, also known as “King Conker,” maintains his innocence and insists he only uses it to prank children. The ring judge insisted that Jackins, like all contestants, chose his curtains from a bag full of championship issues. Conker specialists are not possible. But regulators now say they have extended their investigation “following new evidence emerging”.
Is this possibly evidence that cheating generates significant publicity? After all, some sports only get national attention when there’s a chance someone might break the rules. Not many people can name the top three chess players in the world, but Hans Nyman, currently ranked 18th, has risen to fame since Norwegian world champion Magnus Carlsen lost to him in 2022 and immediately refused to play him again. The subsequent uproar gave chess the exciting sheen of scandal for several months.
Nyman was found innocent of all charges against him, and has since settled the dispute with Carlsen, after admitting to cheating in “random” online games when he was a teenager. But it’s not often that a 20-year-old is forced to sit down for an interview with Piers Morgan and answer the question: “Have you ever used anal beads while playing chess?” Then you have to refuse to use a sex toy to receive secret messages during games.
David Jakins was accused of cheating by using a steel conker painted to look like the real thing. “King Conker” denied any wrongdoing. Photography: Phil Noble/Reuters
You can say “it’s not Joe” all you want, but most sports fans love the drama of a cheating scandal. We seem to particularly value them in fringe sports that would otherwise pass us by. They somehow manage to tickle both sides of our brain at once – the sophisticated, self-aware part that recognizes the utter absurdity of the competitive pastime we’ve invented, and the old-fashioned part that wants to kick the wrongdoers out of our society and leave them to their lives. Bears eat them.
Trivial endeavors can have serious consequences. Two anglers were sentenced to 10 days in jail after being found guilty in 2023 of cheating in an Ohio tournament, after they stuffed their catch with lead weights and fish fillets in pursuit of a $30,000 prize. Video captured in the immediate aftermath, when organizers burned their stock and exposed their violations, suggests they were lucky to escape their angry fellow competitors unscathed.
Perhaps we are drawn to these events because, for a moment, we imagine that we are taking a collective moral stance. Much of the cheating in modern sports goes unpunished, from financial scams to corporate doping. Some of these have been positively normalized: witness the routine spectacle of football players falling to the ground clutching their faces like extras from a World War II film.
In theory, sport only makes sense as a concept if people practice it on flat terms, within arbitrary rules that they set for themselves. In reality, a millionaire businessman is trying to launch a version of the Olympics where competitors can entice themselves into eyeballs, and England’s most successful and richest football club is under investigation on multiple charges of breaching its league’s financial rules (he denies the charges). The modern line is that what benefits one individual – even the richest and most powerful individuals – benefits all of us. What is good for industry is good for sports.
Magnus Carlsen accused his chess rival, Hans Nyman, of cheating after a match in 2022. Nyman admitted to cheating online when he was a teenager. Photograph: Martin Goodwin/The Guardian
So, perhaps, when the World Conker Championships are hit by cheating rumours, we find ourselves nostalgic for imagined simpler times, those good old days of Wacky Races when cheating was as simple as jumping into a car midway through a marathon, or scoring a world goal. Aim for the cup with your fist. At that time, it was easier to figure out who the wrong people were.
And who can blame the world of conker if it helps generate a little publicity for their event and fundraising causes? I don’t want to say they are in good form, but two years ago, when Jackens prepared the conkers for the women’s final, his daughter won the title and a similar “investigation” was launched. A spokesperson duly confirmed to the fans concerned that no anal beads (or more likely fish fillets) were inserted into their bodies.
What raises the image of one conker event raises the image of everyone else. Some, such as the Waveny Valley Conker Championship and the Peckham Conker Championship, have made clear that they welcome sharp training, whether that be baking the nuts, soaking them in vinegar, or even injecting them with resin. You could say it’s all about growing the game. I say it’s not just conkers.
