Who scored the fastest hat-trick in football history?
According to the website of Guinness World Records, which bears the legend, ‘All records listed on our website are current and up-to-date’, the record for the fastest hat-trick in football history still belongs to the late Tommy Ross, who died in May, 2017, aged 71. As an 18-year-old, Ross scored three goals in 90 seconds for Ross County against Nairn County at Dingwall, in the Ross and Cromarty area of the Scottish Highlands, on November 28, 1964. Later in his career, Ross played for Peterbrough United, Wigan Athletic, York City and Brora Rangers. He also managed St. Duthus Football Club, based in the Royal Burgh of Tain, also in the Scottish Highlands.
However, as reported in the ‘Daily Mirror’ on May 4, 2013, Alex Torr, a 20-year-old student at Sheffield Hallam University, scored four goals, including an even faster hat-trick, for Rawson Spring during a 7-1 victory over Winn Gardens in the Meadowhall Sunday League One. According to referee Matt Tyers, Torr scored his first goal after 11 minutes, his second after 11 minutes and 30 seconds and his third, straight from the kick-off, when Winn Gardens lost possession, after 12 minutes and 10 minutes. Think of the odds of this happening, it’s enough to make a bookie quake in his boots. Of his apparently record-breaking third goal, Torr told the Sheffield Star, ‘We were on the attack and I passed the ball to my mate, his shot was stopped and I scored the rebound.’ He added, ‘It was a great feeling.’
Torr was reportedly planning to register his 70-second hat-trick with Guiness World Records but, while the official Twitter account for Rawson Spring Football Club proclaims that they are ‘World record holders for the fastest hat-trick ever scored’, no reference to the player or the club can be found on the Guinness World Records website.
For decades, “dirtiest race in history” moniker belonged to the men’s 100-metre final at the 1988 Summer Olympics in Seoul, South Korea. On September 24, 1988, Ben Johnson beat defending Olympic champion Carl Lewis in a world record time of 9.79 seconds, only to be stripped of his medal and record two days later. In fact, six of the eight competitors that day, including Lewis, wre found to have taken performance-enhancing drugs.
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The short answer is not many and, granted the highly commercialised nature of modern equine breeding, that should come as no real surprise. The Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe may be, by some way, the most valuable race run in Europe, but even a prize fund of €5 million pales into insignificance when compared with potential earnings, especially for stallions, in the multimillion-pound breeding industry. It makes economic sense for top-class thoroughbreds – the pick of the middle-distance division included – to be retired to stud at the peak of their careers, as three-year-olds or, at the latest, as four-year-olds.