The Mammoth Book of Losers

by Karl Shaw

  The most controversial death was that of Renata Agondi in August 1988. The twenty-five-year-old Brazilian lady died from exhaustion after her coach allegedly refused to let her leave the water.

  The very first Channel casualty was a Briton, Ted May. As a teenager in Dartford, Ted was renowned as a strong long-distance swimmer who enjoyed tackling rough water. On stormy nights, he would swim the Thames to visit his girlfriend Florence. “One of these days,” he told her, “I’m going to swim right down this river and clear across to France.” Eventually, they became married and the responsibility of raising nine children got in the way of Ted’s teenage ambition. He was forty-four years old, six foot two inches and close to 250 lbs when he finally got round to attempting it in 1954. By this time, none of the organized long-distance swimming competitions would take him seriously or give him the necessary back-up support, so May decided to go it alone. Unable to afford a support boat, he swam towing an inner tube with his food and drinks inside.

  Despite one failed attempt, which ended in rescue, he tried again a few days later. The Calais police, suspecting that the overweight, middle-aged Englishman was inviting certain death, seized his passport, but May didn’t care. On the morning of 7 September 1954, he was once more on the beach. The last sighting of him was by a tanker. He was in a churning sea, waving his arms wildly and shouting. The chief officer threw a lifebelt, which fell short by twenty feet. It took the tanker eight minutes to turn around, by which time May was gone. The rubber ring was found floating in the Channel the next day, and his body washed up on a Dutch beach shortly afterwards.

  Where Eagles Daren’t

  Michael “Eddie the Eagle’ Edwards was one of the very few athletes who have been able to work their way into sporting folklore with headline-grabbing mediocrity.

  In the early 1980s, he was an ordinary twenty-four-year-old plasterer from Cheltenham. He had learned to ski on a school trip and ever since had dreamed of going to the Winter Olympics as a downhill skier. Having failed to make the cut for the GB team for the 1984 Olympics, he decided to switch disciplines and aim for the 1988 Games as his country’s first ever competitor in the ski jump. He got the nod from the British Ski Federation because nobody else applied.

  To prepare for the Games, Eddie joined the World Cup circuit, but with little money or sponsorship he was forced to improvise. He trained by running up and down stairs and learned to jump in borrowed boots so big he had to wear six pairs of socks and a borrowed helmet tied on with string. To keep costs down, he roughed it in a spare bed in a Finnish mental hospital and, at one point, he was eating scraps from rubbish bins. He had a lucky break when he went to Switzerland and got some free training advice from sympathetic Austrian and French ski-jumping coaches. Unfortunately, he didn’t understand a word they were saying because he couldn’t speak French or German.

  His first major competition was the 1987 World Championships, finishing ninety-eighth in a field of ninety-eight. His thick glasses, worn for his extreme far-sightedness, tended to steam up on the runway as he sped towards possible death. However, despite several injuries, he qualified for the 1988 Winter Olympics.

  By the time he arrived at Calgary for the 1988 Games, he had been given the ironic nickname “Eddie the Eagle” when critics suggested that the Briton, who was twenty pounds heavier than his nearest competitor, would fly like a brick and was more likely to end up in traction rather than on the medallists’ podium.

  But first he had to negotiate his way through the airport without injury. His bags burst on the carousel and he had to jump on and chase after his underwear. On his way to the arrivals lounge, he saw a large banner saying: “Welcome to Calgary, Eddie the Eagle”. He made a bee-line for the sign without realizing that it was 2 a.m. and the automatic doors had been turned off – he walked straight into the glass. That’s when he acquired the nickname “Mr Magoo”. When he finally reached his accommodation, he found that his ski bindings had been damaged and, while he was repairing them, he missed the first practice session for the opening seventy-metre event. He then got himself locked out of his room at the athletes’ village. It all went downhill from there.

  When Eddie completed his final jump in the seventy-metre event in last place (one Italian journalist dubbed him a “ski dropper”), Olympic officials advised him for his own safety not to jump in the ninety-metre competition. One observed caustically that “in such near-perfect conditions, an eleven-year-old child could jump further”.

  Eddie persisted and completed the ninety-metre event, trailing in a predictable last place with his best jump of 73.5 metres. Matti Nykänen, the double-gold-winning Finn, recorded 118.5m with his first jump. But Eddie had still set a British record which stood for six years.

  After the Olympics, the rules were changed. The so-called “Eddie the Eagle rule” required Olympic hopefuls to compete in international events and place in the top 30 per cent of competitors. He was now, officially, the benchmark of Olympic failure. Of course, this didn’t stop him from trying to qualify for the 1992, 1994 and 1998 Games, without success.

  The Eagle soared, briefly, during the 1989 World Cup in Lake Placid when he finished ahead of Dutchman Gerrit Koninenberg on “style”. A jubilant Eddie said afterwards, “I kicked some butt!” A week later, he fell and broke his collarbone. “The jump was so good, and I was in such a good position that I started to panic,” he explained ruefully.

  Back at home, Eddie enjoyed his fifteen minutes of fame. He wrote an autobiography – On the Piste – in 1990 and had a stab at a pop career with the song “Fly, Eddie, Fly” – less heroic than his jumping but every bit as amateurish and reaching number two in Finland. But then, sadly, the money dried up, bankrupting Edwards and forcing him to return to the day job.

  Eddie has no regrets about his career. The one thing that still annoys him, though, is that in his annus mirabilis he was pipped by the world’s most boring snooker player Steve “Interesting” Davis as BBC Sports Personality of the Year.

  Ten Gambling Losers

  1. The Nebraska businessman Terry Watanabe spent over twenty years building up his family business, selling party goods and novelty toys. Then he blew the lot in a losing streak at the gambling tables at Caesar’s Palace and Rio Casinos. Watanabe lost over $120 million in just one year in 2007 and an eye-watering $205 million in total – to date the biggest loss by an individual in Las Vegas history. Tourists came from miles around just to watch him lose on the blackjack table where he would sit playing three hands simultaneously, often hitting even when he was on twenty, hoping for an ace. To add insult to injury, Caesar’s Palace sued him for $15 million in unpaid debts, despite having already taken over $100 million from him.

  2. Most Britons remember the media tycoon Kerry Packer as the man who shook up cricket. In Australia, he was known as the richest man in the country. In 2004, his net fortune was estimated at $6.5 billion – even after his lavish gambling habit put a massive dent in it. In 1999, Packer is believed to have lost up to $40 million in ten months, including almost $28 million during a three-week losing streak at a casino in London. One night he walked into a Mayfair casino on his own, lost £15 million on four roulette wheels in a matter of minutes, then nonchalantly walked out again, apparently untroubled by his loss. Then again, he did survive eight heart attacks.

  3. Omar Siddiqui wasn’t a tycoon; he was an executive at an electronics company. In his spare time, he was also operating a huge fraud, siphoning off millions of dollars in kick-backs; the money went mostly on blackjack. At one point, he was averaging a loss of $8 million a day, with total losses of at least £65 million. Even though he amassed huge IOUs, casinos continued to lend him millions more because he was good business. He was jailed for fraud and sued by casinos right across America for unpaid gambling debts.

  4. The Japanese property developer Akio Kashiwagi was known in 1992 as “the world’s biggest gambler” thanks to his addiction to baccarat. He still holds the record for the biggest baccarat loss in hi
story when he blew $10 million in one session at the Trump Casino. It doesn’t get much worse, although for Kashiwagi it did – he was stabbed to death outside his home shortly afterwards.

  5. In gambling circles, the Syrian businessman Fouadal-Zayat was known as “The Fat Man”. He acquired a taste for fat losses at London’s Aspinall’s casino on his favourite game, roulette. That’s the one where you can quickly get panicked into chasing losses and doubling up every bet, and the quickest way to lose money in a casino. He had visited Aspinall’s more than 600 times in twelve years, losing a whopping £23 million. One night, he opened his account with £500,000 in chips and lost the lot in a mad opening fifteen minutes of play. He promptly bought another £500k in chips and lost it all again. That night, he lost £2.25 million in total. He was now £4 million in the red – then his cheque bounced. A UK court subsequently froze all his assets, including his 747 jumbo jet and his Rolls-Royce.

  6. Zhenli Ye Gon is known in Las Vegas as “Mr Ye”. He has reportedly lost $125 million at a number of Vegas casinos over a number of years. Apparently, this isn’t a huge deal for Gon, who was a pharmaceuticals importer based in Mexico City (or a drugs baron, to you and me). When police raided his home, they uncovered $200 million in cash. Now he’s in a place where there are no roulette wheels. Gon says he was framed and most Mexicans buy his story. Bumper stickers reading “I believe the Chinaman” are now on sale.

  7. The Czech-born British media proprietor and oversized crook Robert Maxwell reputedly made one of the quickest and biggest casino losses of all time while playing at the Ambassadeurs casino in London. While playing three roulette wheels at the same time, he managed to lose £1.5 million in under three minutes. That works out at about £8,000 a second of someone else’s pension money.

  8. The Greek-American Archie Karas became known as the greatest gambler of all time after the largest and longest documented winning streak in gambling history when he turned $50 in December 1992 into over $40 million by the beginning of 1995, simply known as “The Run”. In true Greek financial spirit, he then lost the whole lot again in just three weeks playing dice and baccarat, which war known as “The Loss”. Karas himself claims to have gambled with more money than anyone else in history.

  9. The legendary Stu Ungar, three-time World Series of Poker main event winner, is called the greatest Texas Hold ’Em and Gin Rummy player of all time. Unfortunately, he didn’t stick to what he did well. Most of his winnings at the poker table were lost betting on sports. After one of his WSOP wins he lost $1.5 million in a weekend betting on sports and even lost $80,000 the first time he ever played golf. Ungar didn’t even make it to the first tee and lost the $80k on the putting green; the rest he spent on drugs. Despite having won an estimated $30 million during his poker career, he died in his forties of a heart condition with no assets to his name. Friends had to have a whip-round at Ungar’s funeral to raise funds to pay for the service.

  10. In 2008, the Austrian casino player Josef Reiner lost thousands on the roulette table at his local casino in Vienna. He was so scared of facing his wife that he faked an assault on himself and claimed that he had been the victim of a robbery. To be fair, he did such a great job that he was admitted to hospital, having used an iron bar to smash his own face in, breaking his nose and jaw and finally his arm. Doctors called police after he confessed.

  Ten Most Creative Excuses for Failing a Dope Test

  1. When the US Anti-Doping Agency asked the cyclist Tyler Hamilton to explain the presence of someone else’s red blood cells in his veins, the road racer claimed that the cells belonged to a “vanishing twin” who’d died in his mother’s womb. Medical experts agreed that this was theoretically possible but unlikely. Sporting authorities were more sceptical but Hamilton was allowed to keep his 2004 Olympic medal because his second sample had been accidentally damaged in the laboratory and couldn’t be tested. Hamilton was banned for two years in 2005 after a second positive test.

  2. When the Cuban high-jumper Javier Sotomayor protested his innocence after testing positive for cocaine at the 1999 Pan American Games, he had support from high places – his country’s president, no less. In a televised address, Fidel Castro insisted that Sotomayor was set up by “professionals of counter-revolution” – namely the “Cuban-American mafia”. Sotomayor was allowed to compete in the 2000 Olympics after his ban was shortened, but decided to call it a day and opted for early retirement after failing yet another drugs test in 2001.

  3. The conspiracy route was also tried by World and Olympic 100-metre champion Justin Gatlin. He claimed that he was the victim of sabotage by a vindictive masseur who rubbed a cream containing the banned substance testosterone into his legs. Gatlin received a four-year ban. And in another claim of “tampering”, seven years after winning the 1992 Olympic 5,000-metre title, the German distance runner Dieter Baumann claimed that somebody had maliciously spiked his toothpaste with a performance enhancing drug. But without a suspect and seeing as how, unlike Prince Charles, he is able to squeeze his own toothpaste tube, the authorities decided that this was just another steroid tall tale.

  4. In 1994, British shot-putter Paul Edwards blamed his positive test for steroids on accidentally drinking an entire bottle of shampoo. Why did the bronze-medal winner ingest his hair product? He wouldn’t say. Fortunately, he didn’t follow it up with a conditioner chaser.

  5. In 2007, baseball’s Glenallen Hill acknowledged that a shipment of steroids had indeed shown up at his house, but he swore he had never used them. So why had he ordered them? Hill’s explanation: “marital stress”.

  6. When the Spanish discus thrower David Martínez tested positive for nandrolone, he blamed it on eating infected pork. In an attempt to prove his innocence, the 1992 Olympic finalist went to the trouble of injecting his pet pig with the steroid before slaughtering and eating it. Sadly, his experiment did not leave traces of the drug in his system and the authorities decided he was telling porkies.

  7. When Olympic gold-medal-winning race walker Daniel Plaza crossed the finish line in first place in the 20-km walk at the 1992 Olympics, he was celebrated as the first Spanish track-and-field athlete to win an Olympic gold medal. He fell from grace four years later at the Spanish championships when he tested positive for nandrolone. He claimed that the steroid had got into his system while performing oral sex on his pregnant wife. Pregnant women do produce nandrolone naturally, and Plaza did eventually clear his name, but it took him ten years, by which time he was long retired.

  8. In 2007, the Genoa FC striker Marco Borriello went down a similar route. He was suspended for nearly three months when banned steroids turned up in his urine sample. Borriello blamed the test results on a cream he was rubbing into his penis to treat an STD acquired from his then-girlfriend, Argentine model Belén Rodríguez. When doctors pointed out that the quantity in his system was too high for absorption, Borriello said he must have swallowed some as well because his girlfriend was using the cream on herself.

  9. The Czech left-hander Petr Korda was once ranked number-two tennis player in the world. Korda’s explanation as to how the banned steroid nandrolone came to be found in his system during the 1998 Wimbledon tournament was his fondness for veal. Young calves are fattened on the steroid, but Korda would have to have eaten forty veal calves a day for twenty years to have built up the levels found in his body. An easy mistake to make. But the authorities didn’t believe him and he received a one-year ban, which, at his age, effectively brought his professional career to a close.

  10. Finally, we salute the most creative way of actually admitting having taken drugs, provided by Californian baseball pitcher Chuck Finley. When his ex-wife accused him of smoking marijuana, alcohol abuse and of injecting steroids during their five-year marriage, Finley said, “I can’t believe she left out the cross-dressing.”

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  1 Flitcroft also took inspiration from the Milwaukee postal sorter called Walter Danecki, who wanted to become a professional
golfer but was thwarted by the USPGA and their insistence on evidence of playing ability. Danecki announced himself to the R&A as a professional and entered the 1965 Open, shooting a two-round total in qualifying of 221 – 70 too many to earn him a place in the championship field.

  2 The 1976 Open was eventually won by the American Johnny Miller with a young Seve Ballesteros coming second.

  3 The mistake of carrying more than the fourteen clubs allowed is not unique to Byrne. When Glenn Ralph’s female caddie discovered a child’s putter in the bag, she tried to explain away her lapse by saying, “It’s only a small putter . . . does it matter?”

  4 The Royal Liverpool, where he always took the precaution of booking a private room before the race.

  5 Before Andy Murray won the US Open in 2–2, the last male Brit to win was Fred Perry, who won same event in 1936.

  6 He lost in the second round.

  7 An athlete called Champion came second and one named Fast finished third.

  8 Lorz was later reinstated and won the Boston Marathon in 1905.

  9 The organizers even managed to get his name wrong in the official programme: it was listed back-to-front as “Pietri Dorando”.

  10 Joseph Forshaw, who won the bronze medal having marinated his socks in beef fat to aid comfort, noted later, “We followed the plan adopted at previous marathon races, eating a good breakfast of steak, following this with two raw eggs, some tea and toast . . . on the way, we took nothing but water, except four miles from the finish, having a stitch in the side, I took a drop of brandy. Ordinarily, I don’t believe in drinking spirits, but I had to do something as the side was giving me trouble.”