Minnesota Fats was just as real as . . . Donald Duck!
Al Jabal, a pure-bred Arab ridden by Brian Boulton, owned by Andrea Boulton, won The Three Horseshoes Handicap Stakes over six furlongs in June 2002 at Barbury Castle, Wiltshire.
The chestnut gelding was aged 19 at the time.
Just one year younger, at 18, a horse named Sonny Somers won over jumps in a three-mile handicap at Lingfield in 1980.
Trained by Fred Winter, Sonny Somers won 25 races over jumps.
None were of great importance, but he did finish second in the 1971 Cathcart Chase at the Cheltenham Festival.
The average lifespan for a horse is around 25 years. WAS pool player Minnesota Fats a real person?
I’m sure he appeared in a movie, but I’m not sure if he played himself or the part was taken by an actor. – P.
Minnesota Fats was a fictional character, though a real pool player took the name and tried to claim that he had inspired the character.
In 1959, American writer Walter Tevis published The Hustler, a novel about young pool hustler, Edward “Fast Eddie” Felson, who challenges the legendary Minnesota Fats.
The Hustler was adapted into a 1961 film of the same title, starring Paul Newman as Fast Eddie and Jackie Gleason as Minnesota Fats.
His performance earned Best Supporting Actor nominations for the Academy Award and the Golden Globe, and the film is still considered a classic
A real-life pool hustler, Rudolf Wanderone, known as
New York Fats, realised there was money to be made from being associated with the success of the book and film, so he changed his nickname to match the fiction.
He even went on to play himself as the character “Minnesota Fats” in the 1971 film The Player. Tevis always denied Wanderone had anything to do with the character, writing in a later edition of The Hustler: “I made up Minnesota Fats – name and all – as surely as Disney made up
Donald Duck.”