REUTERS
They said he had nuts of steel.
The winner of a world championship tournament for the children’s game “conker” is being accused of cheating his way to the title — with a steel chestnut found stashed in his pocket.
Dave Jakins, 82, a veteran player known as “King Conker,” won the Conker World Championship in Southwick, England, Sunday by smashing the competition — the game calls for participants to thread chestnuts onto a shoe lace and then try to smash each others nuts.
But runner-up Alastair Johnson-Ferguson cried foul after losing first place, and claimed that Jakins pulled a fast one, noting that his conker “disintegrated in one hit” during the tournament.
Jakins conceded that he did have a steel chestnut in his pocket — but only as a joke.
“We have two conkers from Mr Jakins’ winning matches, and are speaking further to judges,” a spokesman for the champ told Reuters news agency.
“We have a large body of evidence, which we are beginning to tie together,” he said. “Each match has two judges, and there is a chief umpire overseeing things in the ring. It would be difficult to not be spotted cheating.”
So far he has kept his conkers crown.
More than 200 competitors signed up for the tournament Sunday behind a local pub, with proceeds used for charity. Conkers dates to the mid-19th Century and was once a popular children’s game.
In tournaments, participants are required to pull nuts at random from a sack and are not allowed to tamper with them once they have picked them.
In the women’s competition Sunday, Indianapolis native Kelci Banschbach, 34, took first place, the first American to win the tournament since 1965.
With Post wires