With the release date of August 25th for Logan Lucky fast approaching, it got us thinking about some of the shadier moments in sporting history.
Shady is certainly the word to describe the plan the Logan's come up with. A blue-collar family from the hills of West Virginia, their clan has been famous for its bad luck for nearly 90 years. But the conniving Jimmy Logan (Channing Tatum) decides it’s time to turn the family's luck around, and with a little help from his friends, the Redneck Robbers, concocts a nefarious plan.
These are four notable sporting incidents (and a more light-hearted bonus one for good measure) which match the Logan's plan for audacity, theft and humour (granted, it was unintentional in the cases of Pickles, the crime solving dog and Emmanuel Adebayor, the strangely petty thief).
While they demonstrate varying degrees of severity and even criminal nous (much like the Logan's), they are all moments which brought a dark cloud over each of their respective sports.
This is also in a similar vein to Logan Lucky as their plan revolves around stealing $14 million from the Charlotte Motor Speedway on the busiest race day of the year. A heist movie with a difference: Steven Soderbergh, the director of the Ocean’s Eleven trilogy and an A-list cast including Channing Tatum, Daniel Craig and Adam Driver deliver a smart, thrilling and funny blue-collar story of an audacious multi-million dollar robbery.
1919 'Black Sox' scandal
For as famous as the Chicago White Sox are, an unofficial name for a rebellious section of their 1919 roster is possibly the most notorious chapter of their long history. Eight of their players were dubbed 'the Black Sox' after it emerged that they had conspired to purposely lose the 1919 World Series against the Cincinnati Reds in exchange for payoffs from nefarious gambling moguls like Arnold Rothstein.
The story is a fascinating tale and it is easy to see why the players may have felt compelled to do so given that their owner Charles Comiskey was infamous for not paying his players much in spite of them being one of the most consistently successful teams in the league(they had even won the World Series in 1917).
Since there was no union at the time and players weren't allowed to switch teams with approval from the team owner, this left many players resentful of their limited options.
Cinicinnati won the series but word had gotten out about the series being rigged from various sources.
An alleged eight(though we'll get to that later) players were found guilty of conspiring to throw the series by a grand jury in the aftermath. They were subsequently banned for life from professional baseball.
Perhaps the bleakest part about this story is that one of the alleged eight, star man 'Shoeless Joe Jackson' is now largely presumed to have been innocent with it seemingly being the case that the other seven would include his name when talking to gamblers about who was in on it, in order to assure them that they would definitely be able to guarantee defeat.
Shergar, the legendary horse that was kidnapped and ultimately killed
Around 1981 there wasn't a horse to compare with Shergar, who famously won the Epsom Derby that year by a mammoth ten lengths, which is still the biggest margin of victory in the race's 237-year history. As well as this huge achievement, Shergar won four other majors and was named the European Horse of the Year.
His success, however, led to him being sought after by a criminal gang with alleged ties to the IRA. On the 8th of February 1983, they kidnapped him from his Kildare stable.
Details remain something of a mystery from there but the general assumption is that there were failed attempts to ransom him back to his owner the Aga Khan for £5 million. And then when Shergar likely panicked at some point under stressful circumstances, the kidnappers who were inexperienced at dealing with horses, also panicked and decided to shoot him.
A phone call from the kidnappers to racing journalist Derek Thompson a few days after the kidnapping indicated this when they reported that Shergar had 'had an accident' and was now dead.
Shergar's body was never found and no charges were ever brought before anyone for his kidnapping or subsequent killing. It remains one of Irish sport's biggest mysteries.
The World Cup, 1966 and Pickles, the dog who saved the day
Thankfully, not all of these tales are as depressing as that one. Take the case of the 1966 World Cup, where the trophy was actually stolen while on public display as part of a rare stamp exhibition.
A thief made off with the trophy and attempted to arrange a meeting with chairman of the FA, Joe Mears where he demanded £15,000 in exchange.
It's unclear as to how in-depth his plan was as the man, Edward Betchley, was swiftly arrested when he turned up to this meeting and was greeted by policemen that Mears had contacted.
The trophy itself was recovered by a man out walking his dog in South London less than a week after it had gone missing.
Order was restored and justice prevailed as Pickles was an honoured guest of the England team's celebrations after they beat West Germany in the final.
The Pakistan cricket match-fixing scandal of 2010
An undercover sting operation by the now defunct News of the World in 2010 exposed three Pakistan players of being complicit in a match-fixing scam.
Of all of the plans on display here, this was probably the best one with the highest likelihood of not being caught as they did not shoot for the stars and aim to fix the entire result of their series with England.
Instead, the ploy was to throw no-balls(where the bowler oversteps the mark before releasing his pitch) at three designated points in the match.
In the undercover video, bookmaker and associate of the three players, Mazhar Majeed explains which three points the players will intentionally overstep the mark in their run-up. In return, he is given a tidy £140,000 cash payment.
One could argue that the punishment didn't fit the crime as the four people involved only had to serve short prison sentences around the two year mark.
What seems even more lenient is that the three players, captain Salman Butt, Mohammed Asif and Mohammed Amir only received five year bans from the sport. They have since all returned to the domestic scene with Amir even back in the national side.
Bonus: Emmanuel Adebayor steals Robin Van Persie's boots
On a lighter if still strange note, the two famously egotistical strike partners at Arsenal were known not to be the best of teammates.
This feud stemmed from an incident on the last day of the 08-09 season, when Adebayor collected all of his teammate's boots in a bag before departing the stadium and within a few weeks, the club as he moved to Man City.
Van Persie was said to be particularly irritated by it as he had scored two goals in their win over Stoke and had planned to give the boots away as a present to a friend.
Logan Lucky is in cinemas on August 25th. Watch the trailer, find your nearest cinema and book tickets at www.loganlucky.co.uk
