The conker community has been rocked with accusations of cheating during its World Conker Championship. You’re forgiven for not knowing what the hell I’m talking about because I’m just learning about all of this myself.
Conker, it turns out, is more than that rude and raunchy Nintendo 64 game about the sassy squirrel with a foul mouth. It’s a fun, folksy game played in Great Britain and Ireland. Players tie seeds found in horse chestnut trees, known as “conkers,” onto a string, then swing their respective conkers at the opponent’s conker in an attempt to smash the opposing conker. Humans truly can turn anything into a competition.
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A lot of you may just be finding out there’s even a game based around this. Well, let me blow your mind even further by letting you know that there is a World Conker Championship for the best conker players to come together to find out who is the toughest nut to crack.
The recent championship tournament held in Southwick, Northamptonshire became a hotbed of controversy, though.
It’s 82-year-old winner, David Jakins, finally took home the men’s title after having competed in the competition for 40 years. His victory was immediately marred with controversy when a report published in The Telegraph suspected he cheated by swapping his conker for one made out of metal.
The allegations were first raised by Jakin’s opponent, Alastair Johnson-Ferguson, who found it just a little hard to believe that his conker could be so easily obliterated by Jakin’s conker on the first strike. When tournament organizers searched Jakins’ pockets after he won the tournament, they found a steel conker in one of his pockets. Jakins denies having used the steel conker in competition, saying that he only carried it around to entertain children.
For American readers, this is like when a baseball player claims to have “accidentally” brought their corked batting practice bat to a game.
After the discovery of the steel conker, Jakins was quoted as saying, “It’s impossible to cheat at conkers—it’s a load of nonsense.” The event’s chairman, Jim Packer, took Jakin’s side, saying, “Somebody’s a sore loser, I think.”
The investigation is ongoing, but event officials have already said that Jakins was being closely monitored throughout the entire tournament, so it seems unlikely that he could have been using an illegal conker for all or even some of the time.
In happier conker championship news, a 34-year-old American woman from Indianapolis named Kelci Banschbach, a.k.a. “The Queen Conker,” walked away from the tournament as its ultimate champion, having defeated Jakins in the cross-gender finals.
It’s the first time that an American has won the competition since its inception in 1965.
