Her Majesty joins sporting jinx list

Have we witnessed another great sporting jinx? Like it or not, I think we may well have.

From Ivan Lendl who never won Wimbledon to Boris Becker and Pete Sampras who failed to bag the French Open to English football club Birmingham's 100-year curse to the Boston Red Sox who failed to win a World Series for 88 years, we can now sadly add the name of Her Majesty the Queen to that miserable list of personalities who have been a victim of the great sporting jinx.

It's been 102 years since a horse owned by a British monarch has won the English Derby and a first attempt at winning the Irish equivalent has also come to naught for Her Majesty who has won every other Classic.

Carlton House, after all, will not be the horse to break the Royal Derby jinx, having lost Sunday's big race at the Curragh to add to his disappointment at Epsom where he lost his shoe en route to running third behind French horse Pour Moi and Irish raider Treasure Beach.

Sporting history is riddled with jinxes and curses and perhaps none more famous than the Sports Illustrated cover curse. Some of the most famous sports personalities have fallen victim to the feared curse that follows their appearance on the cover of the world's most famous sports magazine. It is said that once their picture is published on the front cover of Sports Illustrated they are struck by a curse that results in the loss of a big game or a streak of very bad luck.

Statistics reveal that over 900 celebrities who have been featured on the magazine's front cover have been plagued by a series of bad luck, a curse that has left many stars refusing to have their picture published in the American monthly. The list of victims includes names likes John McEnroe, Anna Kournikova, Boris Becker and Michael Jordan — the last named being one of the biggest casualties - for the day after the issue of Sports Illustrated with his picture on the cover hit the stands his wife filed for divorce in a case that would cost him his fortune — $300 million (Dh1.1 billion)!

Superstitions

One of the funny things about winning and losing is that we all have superstitions and some of even believe that there are some unseen forces that can influence the outcome of a game or race. If that is the case though, how would Sports Illustrated have found stars to grace their famous covers?

Perhaps some of us may think it's silly being superstitious, but I'm sure the Queen must be paying more attention to the old saying that lightning strikes twice now that Carlton House has failed to win the Derby on two tries.