Nocebo Effect: How Sports Curses Take Hold — SkimNews
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- Mayo GAA won the All-Ireland Gaelic football final last month, ending a 75-year streak of 11 final losses attributed to a priest's curse stipulating the team would not win again until every member of the 1951 title-winning squad had died.
- Paddy Prendergast, the last surviving member of Mayo's 1951 squad, died in 2021; Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney, who has family ties to Mayo, posted on X after the win: "The curse is broken."
- Philip Hurst and colleagues at Canterbury Christ Church University demonstrated the nocebo effect in sport: runners given an inert supplement but told it would hurt their sprint ran slower, while the same supplement described as performance-enhancing had little measurable effect.
- Birmingham City is said to have endured a 100-year hex placed on its home ground in 1906, prompting manager Barry Fry to urinate on the pitch's four corners as a "reset" ritual.
- Harry Kane missed a close-range chance in England's FIFA World Cup match against Ghana shortly after a self-described "witch-doctor" claimed to have cast a spell on him.
- Former Mayo player Colm Boyle said after the All-Ireland win: "The shackles are off."
- Ted Lasso answered a fictional "treatment room curse" with a late-night cleansing ritual in which players threw treasured possessions into a container he set alight.
Why it matters: Hurst's study found runners told an inert supplement would harm them ran slower, while positive framing had little measurable effect — an asymmetry the article uses to explain why negative sports narratives wound teams more than positive talk heals them. For coaches and players, that gap reframes ritual, narrative-breaking, and confidence-building as performance variables rather than superstition.
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