David Jakins still stands as the 2024 winner in the men’s class at the World conkers championships homepagebut the organization has announced that it is now investigating whether he captured the title on false grounds. This after an official after Sunday’s final in Southwick, Northamptonshire, had searched his pockets and found a chestnut-like lump of metal in one of the Englishman’s pockets.
– My conker broke in one hit, and that just doesn’t happen. Now it turns out that “King Conker” had a fake steel conker, so he could have traded his real conker for it. Or he could have marked the conker strings to pick out a tougher nut,” 23-year-old finalist Alastair Johnson-Ferguson told Telegraph.
Conkers are in the first place a children’s game that has existed in various variants for at least 200 years, mainly in Great Britain and Ireland. The rules here are briefly that two players have a string at least 20 centimeters long with a randomly selected horse chestnut attached to one end and then crank one against the other, one at a time.
Conkers involves smashing the opponent’s chestnut with their own chestnut. Photo: Hesther Ng/TT
The person who attaches the chestnuts to the strings is called “King Conker” and this year that role was therefore Jakins, who has participated in the world championships since 1977 and now won his first victory. American Kelci Banschbach, 34, became Queen Conker and defeated him in the mixed final.
– As if it wasn’t suspicious enough that the event’s top judge is entering his own tournament and winning, he’s also wiped out opponents’ nuts in one fell swoop and then been caught with a metal conker. The question that must be asked is: How has he been able to win now after never having done so before? says conker enthusiast David Glew to the Telegraph.
He was one of the around 2,000 spectators at Sunday’s event, which featured 256 competitors, witnessed Jakins knocking out his opponents by just one stroke in the quarters and semis as well, which is described as rare to do even once. David Jakins himself denies cheating and says he only had his metal chestnut “for fun”.
– I was found with the steel conker in my pocket, but I only have it with me for fun and I have not used it during the competition, says David Jakins.
– Yes, I helped prepare the conkers before the tournament, but this is not cheating or match fixing, and I did not mark the strings in any way. I just tried to hit hard and somehow I won in the end.
