Notorious: The Maddest and Baddest Sportsmen on the Planet

Courageous, generous, and famously popular in his home town, Vaquerin had struggled to adapt to life after his rugby career was brought to a premature end in 1980 by a knee injury he first suffered five years earlier (his absence gave Gerard Cholley his chance and the moving brick outhouse quickly established himself as France’s premier No.1).

After his retirement, Vaquerin had thrown himself into other sports, notably hunting and deep-sea diving, and had spent six years in Mexico before coming back to his home town, where he opened a bar called Le Cardiff. A larger-than-life bull-necked bruiser with a shiny pate and Pancho Villa moustache, locals said Vaquerin ‘liked to live life at 100 kilometres an hour’.

On 10 July 1993, the 42-year-old son of Spanish immigrants organised a party in a local arena to celebrate the twentieth anniversary of his first cap, won against Romania when he was just 20, making him the youngest prop ever to have played international rugby. Despite the fact that a huge crowd had turned up, Vaquerin, who had only had one aperitif, grew restless and went in search of fun.

He crossed to the wrong side of the tracks and wandered into a famously rough Beziers bar and, despite the protestations of friends, proceeded to pick a row with a fellow drinker. The exact sequence of events isn’t clear, but it seems that the poor man accidentally spilt Vaquerin’s drink, and then offered to buy him another. When the bull-necked prop refused the offer and suggested that they fight instead, the man understandably refused. This is the point at which, to the astonishment of the whole bar, he pulled out a gun from his car and offered his terrified adversary another option: to play Russian roulette with him. Unsurprisingly, the man simply turned and bolted.

Now in the process of having, er, fun, Vaquerin challenged the worried locals to take up his kind offer and join him in a sociable game of blind man’s buff with bullets. But when no one would play with him, he took matters into his own hands. Removing five of the six bullets from the chamber of his Smith and Wesson revolver and uttering the immortal words ‘if you bastards won’t play with me, I’ll play by myself’, he did just that. The sixth bullet entered his right temple, killing him instantly. Friends said he died as he had lived, in a desperate pursuit of excess.

START FC (#ulink_a858710c-4c4c-569b-8843-a9f86cff0ac4)

Playing for keeps

Sport’s ability to make a difference in the most extreme circumstances was demonstrated by the ultimate pyrrhic victory in the midst of the madness that was the eastern front during the Second World War. In arguably the most savage and one-sided David versus Goliath encounters of all time, a bunch of malnourished Ukrainian footballers in rags and shoes took on the mighty Luftwaffe in what became known as The Death Match. It was the classic Catch 22: lose and they betrayed the nation, win and they would face a firing squad or worse. They won.

The ‘they’ in question was Start FC, the reassembled ashes of the 1939 Dynamo Kiev side which had been one of the best pre-war outfits in Europe, possibly the greatest of Europe’s inter-war sides. When the Nazis overran Kiev during Operation Barbarossa, many of the side were dispatched to slave labour camps; others, such as Lazar Kogen, were summarily executed.

Many Ukrainians initially doubted that the Nazis could be worse than Stalin, who had a man jailed for ten years for being first to sit down after a standing ovation and had another executed for taking down Stalin’s portrait to paint the wall behind it. Yet within a fortnight of taking Kiev, the Nazis had slaughtered 33,000 Jews at Babi Yar and the city’s inhabitants understood the horrific nature of an occupation which only 20 per cent of Kiev’s inhabitants would survive.

The highest-profile member of that Dynamo Kiev team was Nikolai Trusevich. In late 1941 the charismatic goalkeeper had just been released from an internment camp but was close to death from starvation. As the emaciated figure shuffled around looking for food to keep him alive—every cat, dog and rat in the city had already been eaten—he ran into football-mad Losif Kordik whose reward for collaborating with the Nazis was to be given charge of a large bakery. Not only did Kordik give the former Dynamo captain the job which saved his life, but he also ordered him to scour the city and employ any former team-mates he could find.

When the Nazis allowed football to be played in 1942 in an attempt to normalise life, the bakery owner asked Trusevich to form a team from his fellow workers—almost all of whom were Dynamo men—but many worried they would be seen as collaborators. Trusevich argued the opposite case passionately: ‘We may not have weapons but we can fight on the football pitch. We will be playing in the colour of our flag. The fascists should know that our colour cannot be defeated.’ And so Start FC was born.

Despite their shambolic physical state, Start beat a team of local collaborators 7-2, then dispatched sides representing occupying forces from Hungary and Romania, the latter 11-0. When Start beat a German unit 6-0 and started to become a focus for Ukrainian pride, alarm-bells sounded and the Germans fielded the best team in the Reich, the Luftwaffe’s Flakelf. Start’s starving Slavs beat the well-fed Aryan Supermensch 5-1.

Apoplectic, the Germans ordered a replay, which took place before a capacity crowd of Ukrainians and Germans, with 200 Wehrmacht dog handlers in attendance. Nobody harboured any illusions about what another Start win would mean. Just before the match an SS officer walked in and announced that he would be the referee, instructing the Start players to give the Nazi salute before the game. Flakelf saluted to loud roars from the German spectators, but when Start instead clapped their fists to their chests and shouted ‘Fitzcult Hura’—(‘physical culture’ the traditional greeting before any Soviet sporting event) they had signed their death warrants.

When the Ukrainians led 3-1 at half-time, they were visited by another SS officer. ‘You have played very well,’ he said. ‘And we are very impressed. But you cannot expect to win. I want you to take a moment to think of the consequences.’ They did, winning 5-3, with defender Klimenko running almost the whole length of the pitch, through several tackles, to the goal line, but instead of putting the ball into the goal he stopped it on the line; toying with the Master Race and humiliating them in the process. Then he ran into the goal, turned, and kicked the ball back up the field. That’s when the referee blew for full-time, more than fifteen minutes early.

Very few Start players escaped, and most were tortured before being dispatched to the great clubhouse in the sky. On the day when Trusevich was finally killed, two Start teammates in his labour camp had already died of wounds inflicted in the torture chamber when he was instructed to line up. A guard, approaching him from behind, tried to use his rifle butt on the back of Trusevich’s head but, defiant and agile to the end, he dodged the blow and leapt at the guard screaming: ‘Red sport will never die’. Three guns barked: he was dead before he hit the ground.

DAVID ICKE (#ulink_725602d1-e5f9-5b0b-8695-c8b50358ea41)

The Son of Godhead

Forced to retire from football at 21 (‘three sevens, an important number in my view’ he said mysteriously) because of premature rheumatoid arthritis, Hereford goalkeeper David Icke went on to become a household name as a soccer TV presenter for twelve years. Then, in 1990, he went mad. Absolutely bonkers, in fact. Declaring that he was ‘the son of Godhead’, he went on to outline quasi-religious beliefs that were more Ron L Hubbard than Glenn Hoddle.

His epiphany was nothing if not amusing. He went onto Wogan, dressed from head to foot in turquoise, and told the genial Irishman that: ‘in the 1980s when I was a BBC presenter there was this presence close to me. I thought someone else was there. I went to a psychic and she said I would be world famous and was the Son of God—and there I was, presenting the snooker.’ Not surprisingly Wogan was a little sceptical and pointed out that the audience were laughing.

‘The best way of removing negativity,’ Icke said, ‘is to laugh and be joyous, Terry. So I am glad that there has been so much laughter in the audience tonight.’

‘They’re not laughing with you! They’re laughing at you!’ replied an incredulous Wogan.

Among Icke’s more choice utterances was that he had received ‘channelled messages’ from both a Chinese mandarin, Wang Yee Lee, and from Socrates. He also reckons that the world had been taken over by 12ft blood-drinking, child-abusing alien lizards (the Queen is one, so was her Mum, and so are George Bush, Tony Blair, Hillary Clinton, Kris Kristofferson, and Boxcar Willie). So convinced is he of this that in the wake of the World Trade Center bombings he published a book called Alice in Wonderland and the World Trade Center Disaster: Why the official story of 9/11 is a monumental lie in which he outlined an elaborate conspiracy theory about the events of that day, arguing that it was carefully staged by high-ranking members of the Illuminati (reptilian bloodline), including George Bush, Dick Cheney, and Tony Blair. ‘Reptiles run the world. I have had dozens of people telling me they’ve seen important people turning into reptilian humanoid figures. They have nodules on their head and drink human blood, mainly of blonde-haired, blue-eyed people.’ When asked about his claim that the Queen is a lizard who drinks human blood and enjoys child sacrifice, he replied: ‘If it’s not true take me to court. Let’s have it out.’

Other nutty pronouncements include the revelation that the planet earth vibrates at the same velocity as turquoise; that Arran, a small and perfectly respectable island off the west coast of Scotland, would fall off the end of the world and into the sea in 1997; and that the Sahara would blossom once more. Not surprisingly, Arran is still as dry as a temperance meeting and the Sahara’s still fairly sandy.

Icke’s work has involved a great deal of travel in which he has been ‘leaving stones and pieces of wood in different places to help unlock the combination set up by Arthur, Avola, and Merlin and so release the Green Dragon energies to the heart chakras of the planet’. We may not know what he’s talking about, but the Muans did—they were our predecessor race, who had thin bodies with ‘little hair’ and long, white soft gowns, and who ‘did away with themselves by getting overawed by the spirits of rocks.’

Icke has grown increasingly potty since 1991, setting up a cult on the Isle of Wight and issuing eye-wateringly amusing edicts. As with all sensible latter-day yogis, most of his followers seem to be young, blonde, and female. So maybe there is a method in his rather extreme form of madness. The turquoise-clad one was last seen presenting Headfuck, a late night session of weird film clips and music videos on the Sci-Fi channel while simultaneously pretending not to exist any more. ‘David Icke does not exist,’ said David Icke. ‘My name is just a name for what my infinite consciousness is experiencing.’ Quite.

DARRYL HENLEY (#ulink_a8f99ced-d57d-5774-9745-44cf1352035b)

Living the American Dream

The LA Rams defensive back was never a man to let the grass grow under his feet—well, not without wanting to sell it on. When he began to get a little fed-up with a career in American football that seemed to be more about the taking part than the winning—‘in six seasons we won just thirty-four games; losing became okay and accepted’—he decided that it was time to set up a second career for the time when his $600,000 a year salary dried up.

Being the product of an exclusive private Catholic school and UCLA university, Henley knew how to live the American dream, and also needed to prove he was a leader of men. What better way to combine the two, and to liven up life a little, than by setting up an America-wide drug-smuggling ring with himself at its head.

Things started to unravel in 1993 when Henley’s accomplice, a pretty 19-year-old former cheerleader called Tracey Ann Donaho, was arrested by the FBI carrying 12 kilos of cocaine in her luggage. The dealers for whom the coke was destined soon came after Henley, armed with malice aforethought and AK-47s. Rams administrator Jack Faulkner later testified that he saw two ‘short, chunky black males’ with guns and several kilos of bling jewellery chase Henley across the Rams parking lot before their intended mark sped off in his sportscar.

‘It was a very, very difficult time,’ Henley said later. ‘I was kidnapped one time in training camp, just thirty minutes before bed check. They forced me into their vehicle. They finally let me go at 12.30 a.m. At practice, I had the whole OJ thing. I had secret police there. Private investigators. I was picked up and taken back and forth in a bulletproof Ford.’

None of that was enough to keep him out of prison though, especially when Donaho started singing. On March 28 1995 in Santa Ana, Henley was convicted for selling 50 pounds of cocaine and was placed in the Metropolitan Detention Center to await sentencing. Henley, though, was nothing if not determined, and displaying his three salient characteristics of charm, stubbornness and extreme nastiness, he befriended warder Rodney Anderson and then used the gullible guard’s cellphone to arrange deliveries of $1m shipments of heroin from his cell.

Perverting prison warders and peddling drugs obviously didn’t take up enough time, so Henley filled up the rest of his existence by plotting to kill Donaho, who had turned State’s witness against him, and US District Judge Gary L Taylor, the Santa Ana trial judge who had found him guilty.

Unfortunately for Henley, not everybody found him as charming as his pet warder. When his tiresome boasts about being ‘Da Man’ wore thin on fellow inmates, they grassed on him. Predictably for such an inept criminal, the men on the outside with whom he was dealing turned out to be undercover FBI agents who later testified that they set up $1m of sham drug deals with Henley and the guard, adding that Henley offered then $100,000 per hit to ‘whack’ Judge Taylor and Donaho. Another outside accomplice, brother Eric, was also arrested and sentenced to five years in jail.

In March 1997, Henley received forty-one years for trafficking and plotting to kill Donaho and Taylor. ‘It is obvious that he [Henley] is even more dangerous in custody than out of custody,’ said judge Idelman at his trial. ‘If there was ever a guy who needed to be locked down twenty-four hours a day, it’s Henley. If the court was sentencing Mr Henley, the sentence would be different, I assure you. The defendant is obviously a complete and hardened criminal, so any speech to him is a waste of time.’

Henley is currently spending his time in an Illinois super-maximum-security prison alongside teflon don John Gotti and the rest of America’s most wanted. He spends twenty-three hours a day in his cell and becomes eligible for parole in 2031, when he reaches 65.

LARS ELSTRUP (#ulink_b0477b4a-1d57-5aa1-b346-43d827e4278e)

The wildest goose of ’em all

After winning the European Championship in 1992 with Denmark in one of sport’s great fairytales, the pro-digiously talented Luton Town footballer quit the beautiful game at the height of his powers to join the Wild Geese religious commune in Copenhagen. During his time with the Geese, he was to become ‘a body artist’ and rechristen himself Dorando, but it was all to end in tears.

Seven years after joining the cult, which he eventually came to run with his then girlfriend, Elstrup decided he needed a dose of self-diagnosed therapy and got it by playing music so loud that it blew all of his speakers. Even hippies draw the line somewhere, and by way of punishment Elstrup’s better half denied him visiting rights to his pet daschund. Naturally enough, this was the cue for the suicide bid which saw him kicked out of the commune seven years after he’d joined. ‘I was so depressed that I saw no reason to carry on. I tried to hang myself and cut my wrists but I couldn’t go through with it. I lay in bed for eighteen hours a day for two years.’

Not that that was the end of loony Lars. He made a brief comeback with Danish side Odense, during which he starred in a memorable testimonial match with former Denmark keeper Peter Schmeichel. ‘He screamed at me to defend,’ said Elstrup, ‘so I said, “Shut up, you big fuck”. He was so shocked he dropped the ball and their striker scored!’

After quitting Odense, Elstrup was soon in trouble again, this time for slapping a schoolboy. And then, nine years after he’d quit football, he mysteriously turned up in the middle of Copenhagen’s busiest pedestrian shopping street circled by a rope and waving his penis at passers-by. ‘In some respects,’ he said shortly before being removed by the police while kicking and screaming and threatening legal action in the European Court of Human Rights, ‘I do this to provoke people. I am very aware of people’s reactions and I love the fact that people recognise me as Lars Elstrup.’

Nakedness and cross-dressing have become themes for Elstrup. The former striker now wears women’s clothing all the time, and was arrested for showing his manhood in a mall while wearing a dress and rollerskates. Asked what he was doing by the police, he said simply: ‘We must drop our masks and examine our own shit.’

The last sighting of Elstrup was in London, when he made a guest appearance for the New Musical Express’s football side wearing only a pair of skimpy paisley underpants. Having scored five goals in their 9-5 win over lad’s mag Loaded, during which he had constantly exhorted his team-mates to drink more water, he then ran to the sidelines screaming ‘Yellow piss is for losers’. Asked if he fancied a post-match pint, a virtually naked Elstrup answered: ‘No…pussy’ and was last seen running full-tilt towards the fleshpots of Soho.

RAE CARRUTH (#ulink_a337369a-c27a-56eb-9d89-33f5f89ae1f9)

Happy families? Not him…

The man with a head shaped like a baked bean rivals Darryl Henley and OJ Simpson for first place in the gridiron Hall of Shame, which is quite some boast. A real up-and-comer for the Carolina Panthers NFL team, his gravy train hit the buffers in 1999 when his 24-year-old girlfriend Cherica Adams told him she was expecting his child. Not wanting to play happy families and with hefty drugs debts to service, the thought of handing over any of his $650,000 salary in child maintenance payments was quickly dismissed as a non-starter. The solution? The little Rae of sunshine coldly arranged for a heavily pregnant Adams to be the victim of a drive-by killing in which she was shot four times in November 1999.

He hired Van Brett Watkins to do the actual shooting, and under questioning, he soon confessed. Both Watkins and his friend Michael Kennedy, who drove the car that carried Watkins, gave identical testimony—and both of them put Carruth squarely in the frame as the mastermind of the plot. The most damning evidence of all, however, came from the mouth of the dying mother-to-be. In obvious pain, Adams told the operator who fielded her 911 call that Carruth had pulled his Ford Expedition in front of her car, forcing her to stop, before ‘somebody pulled up beside me and did this. I think he [Carruth] did it. I don’t know what to think.’

It didn’t look good when the FBI, searching for Carruth, tracked him down in a motel parking lot, where they found him in the trunk of a Toyota surrounded by candy bar wrappers and a bottle of his own urine. He’d been there for almost twenty-four hours, curled up in the foetal position.