Turkey Shoot: 2011's biggest sporting flops

IT CAN BE difficult to assess failure accurately.

Months of training, hours of strategising, a dogged commitment to emotional discipline: it all counts for little if any of a number of more arbitrary factors– the substandard performance of an official, say, or the untimely emergence of an injury– assume centre stage at a decisive moment.

This is why a compassionate appraisal of defeat is usually the best policy. Unless, of course, you’re dealing with any of the individuals included in our retrospective of sporting FAIL below.

In that case, you’ve carte blanche to point and laugh.

Turkey Shoot: 2011's biggest sporting flops

Previous 1 / 8Next

Fernando Torres and Andy Carroll
Source: Stephen Pond/EMPICS Sport; Nick Potts/PA Wire/Press Association Images
South Africa fails to read the fine print
Source: Chris Ricco/Sports Inc/Press Association Images
England's Rugby World Cup disaster
Source: Steve Parsons/PA Archive/Press Association Images
David "The Hayemaker" Haye
Source: Frank Augstein/AP/Press Association Images
The good, the bad and the Red Sox
Source: Patrick Semansky/AP/Press Association Images
The curse of E! Lamar Odom, Kris Humphries and Hank Baskett.
Source: AJM/EMPICS Entertainment; Matt Slocum/AP/Press Association Images; AJM/AJM/EMPICS Entertainment
The public utterances of Joseph S. Blatter
Source: Michael Probst/AP/Press Association Images