There are few things sports fans love more than winning. The other thing they love, apparently, is having something, or someone, to blame when their team loses. Sometimes, it is the referee. Sometimes, it is the coach. Sometimes, it is the goalkeeper who “should have saved that.” And sometimes, when all reasonable explanations have run out, there is only one option left… a curse.
Sport has produced some truly impressive examples of bad luck becoming something much bigger. A missed penalty becomes a curse. A trophy drought becomes a curse. A celebrity boyfriend changes teams and suddenly his career is apparently cursed. Coincidence? Probably.
Will that stop fans from blaming supernatural forces? Absolutely not.
With Halloween around the corner, it seems like the perfect time to investigate some of sport’s most famous curses, from Formula 1 to the Kardashian family and even one that hit a little closer to home at Tuks.
The Ferrari Curse
Few names in Formula 1 carry quite as much history as Scuderia Ferrari. The Italian team has won more Constructors’ Championships than anyone else, produced some of the sport’s greatest drivers and has been one of the defining teams of Formula 1 since its earliest days. And yet, somehow, Ferrari fans have spent years wondering whether the team is cursed. The so-called “Ferrari curse” is less about one specific supernatural event and more about the sheer amount of heartbreak the team has managed to collect over the years. Strategy disasters, mechanical failures, unfortunate timing and championship defeats have all contributed to the idea that if something can go wrong for Ferrari, it probably will.
For Ferrari supporters, watching a race can sometimes feel less like a motorsport event and more like a weekly exercise in emotional endurance. There is even a strange pattern surrounding drivers who leave the team. Fernando Alonso left Ferrari without a championship, Sebastian Vettel never won the title with the team and Charles Leclerc has experienced enough near-misses to make anyone start looking suspiciously at the nearest full moon.
Of course, there is a much simpler explanation than a curse: Formula 1 is incredibly difficult, championships are decided by tiny margins and Ferrari has spent a very long time under an enormous amount of pressure. But where is the fun in that?
The Kardashian Kurse
If Ferrari’s curse is built on decades of sporting heartbreak, the Kardashian Kurse is considerably more entertaining (and considerably less scientific) and, ironically, Lewis Hamilton seems to be a victim of both.
The internet has spent years joking that professional athletes who date members of the Kardashian-Jenner family suddenly become worse at their jobs. The list of alleged victims has included NBA players Lamar Odom, Kris Humphries and Tristan Thompson, among others. The theory is that the relationship begins, the athlete becomes famous outside of their sport and suddenly their career starts going downhill. Never mind injuries, ageing, team changes, form or the fact that professional athletes are human beings and therefore occasionally have bad seasons.
No. It must be the Kardashians.
The “curse” became such a popular internet theory that it eventually became part of the culture surrounding the family. Even Kendall Jenner has poked fun at the idea, with the joke becoming so well-known that the curse itself has almost become more famous than some of the relationships. There is, unsurprisingly, no actual evidence that dating a Kardashian causes an athlete to miss free throws. But if your team’s star player starts dating one, you are probably going to hear about it from the fans.
The Proteas and the Art of Making Things Painful
South African sports fans do not need to look overseas for a curse. We have had enough trauma of our own. The Proteas’ reputation for “choking” at major cricket tournaments has followed the team for decades, with the 1999 Cricket World Cup semi-final against Australia becoming one of the most infamous examples. South Africa needed nine runs from the final over to reach the World Cup final. Lance Klusener hit a boundary to bring the scores level, before the final moments descended into chaos. A disastrous run-out left South Africa and Australia tied, but Australia progressed because they had won their earlier Super Six match.
Technically, this was not a supernatural curse. Emotionally, however, South African cricket supporters may disagree.
Since then, every major tournament has brought the same question: could this finally be the year? For years, the answer seemed to be an impressive combination of “no” and “please don’t make us relive 1999.” The Proteas have since made progress in breaking that reputation, but sporting curses are rarely interested in facts. Once a narrative sticks, every future failure becomes evidence that the curse is still alive and well.
Kaizer Chiefs’ Backline Curse
If there is a sporting curse going around South Africa right now, Kaizer Chiefs might have a pretty good case for being its latest victim. Their defence has been hit by an injury crisis so severe that at this point, Chiefs fans might be tempted to start checking whether someone has offended a football witch. Five defenders have been ruled out through injury, including Reeve Frosler, Nkanyiso Shinga, Paseka Mako, Bradley Cross and Kabelo Nkgwesa, leaving the team scrambling for options at the back.
And because football apparently enjoys adding insult to injury, the problem has not exactly stopped there. Chiefs have had to shuffle their defensive line around and find players willing to fill positions they probably did not expect to be playing any time soon. At this stage, the question is not so much who is starting in defence, but whether Chiefs have enough defenders left to form an actual defence. Maybe it is bad luck. Maybe it is football. Or maybe there is a very angry ghost somewhere in Naturena who really, really does not want Chiefs to keep a clean sheet.
And then, there was TuksRugby
Closer to home, TuksRugby has had its own history with sporting superstition. In 2009, UP-Tuks had the opportunity to win the Carlton Cup for the third consecutive year. The problem? They were playing Police. UP lost 31-28 after extra time, ending their chance of becoming the first Tuks team in 25 years to win the competition three years in a row.
And apparently, that was enough for the “hat-trick curse” to be born.
For the next few years, that third consecutive Carlton Cup title remained frustratingly out of reach. Then came 2015. Tuks defeated Police 42-15 in the Carlton Cup final, finally winning the trophy for the third consecutive year and becoming the first UP side since 1984 to achieve the feat. The University of Pretoria itself described it as finally breaking the “hat-trick curse.”
So, what exactly caused the curse? Bad luck? Pressure? One particularly unfortunate match in 2009? Or perhaps Police had simply decided they had done enough haunting for one lifetime. Either way, Tuks eventually got their revenge. And considering UP went on to win another Varsity Cup title in 2026, it seems the rugby department has survived its supernatural encounter rather well.
So… are sporting curses real? Probably not.
There is usually a perfectly reasonable explanation behind most sporting disasters. Teams lose because they make mistakes. Players have bad games. Injuries happen. Cars break down. Coaches make questionable decisions that cause fans to immediately start Googling their replacement. But that does not really matter because sport is emotional, and humans are very good at finding patterns. When the same team suffers the same kind of heartbreak repeatedly, it becomes much more satisfying to call it a curse than to accept that sometimes sport is simply cruel. And once fans believe in a curse, every little thing becomes part of the evidence. A missed penalty? Curse. A red card? Curse. Dating Kim Kardashian? Definitely a curse. A university rugby team losing a final in extra time? You guessed it.
Maybe sporting curses are not really about ghosts, bad spirits or supernatural forces at all. Maybe they are just stories that fans create to make sense of the unpredictable. Or maybe there really is a ghost sitting on the Ferrari pit wall waiting for someone to choose the wrong tyre strategy.
Honestly, at this point, it would explain a lot.
Visual : Mpho Makwela
