How Conna Chahal tapped into the ‘hopecore’ trend and reminded his 184,000 followers that anything is possible in sport
In 2022, Conna Chahal was just a lad from Coventry working a 9-5. He started posting sports content on TikTok to test out the waters, and a common theme was found. People are obsessed with the underdog.
“I started in 2022. My videos did alright, so I just carried on posting. When a new underdog story pops up that people have never heard before, they tend to stay,” Conna says. “When they hear the story, they think, wow, how have I never heard about that? Then they look it up and see that it’s real.”
‘Hopecore,’ a trend where users post inspiring, heartfelt and wholesome videos of athletes, animals and babies. It has become an internet sensation, and Conna has played up to this, building a following on unheard or forgotten ‘miracles’ about the little guy conquering the world, which tend to gain huge traction.
“Me personally, I love finding out about stories I knew nothing about,” says Conna. “I think audiences are similar. There’s a demand for it because people like knowing what they don’t know.
“When you bring emotional stories back to life, those videos do really well. People love it because that team or athlete had no right to achieve what they did.”
One video that did particularly well, which gained almost one million views and Conna himself sees as the best underdog tale of all time, is the beautiful yet heartbreaking story of the 1993 Zambian national team, who were at the time widely regarded as the best African team of all time and were clear favourites to win the upcoming African Cup of Nations.
This wasn’t to be, though, as a plane with the team onboard crashed near Libreville, Gabon, killing everyone onboard. It took Zambia until 2012 to win their first African Cup of Nations, but when they eventually did, it was won only a few hundred metres away from where the plane crashed back in 1993. The 2012 team dedicating their victory to those who tragically passed away almost 30 years prior.
“For Zambia, I didn’t want that great team who sadly passed away in the plane crash to be forgotten,” says Conna. “They deserved to be remembered. It’s making sure stories and people are remembered. I don’t like it when a sad story is also a forgotten story. If a tragic story is remembered, then at least those people can live on their legacies.
“And then in 2012, the fact they won it not too far away from where the plane crashed. It’s unbelievable. Nobody thought they were going to win it, and then the final was in Libreville, where the plane went down, and they won it there. That has to be higher powers. Ivory Coast had all these Premier League players, and Zambia had none, but they beat them in the final. How does this happen?
“I had loads of Zambians thanking me for sharing their story with the rest of the world. People in Zambia would never forget about it, but people across the world also shouldn’t forget about that team.”
But why are we all so moved by these stories, even if we don’t have an affiliation with the athlete? Well, Alice Pinion, a sports mind coach who worked as a sports psychologist in ‘every sport you can name’, explains that chemicals are released when we see someone who does well after facing adversity.
“People viewing these types of TikToks, especially sports lovers, are going to support the characters that they like and feel inspired by rather than basing their support off the expected outcome,” Alice, the dedicated sports psychologist for Target Darts, says.
“Content like this does so well because it’s compelling. We trigger a happy hormone release in our brain chemistry when we are reading or watching content about like-minded people, or people that we have an affinity with,” she goes on to say. “We either imagine that we could be in that position, or we simply want to support that person, which releases all kinds of happy chemicals into our system and regulates our serotonin.”
Conna has a similar view and uses the example of Crystal Palace beating Manchester City in the recent FA Cup final as an example.
“It just means more to the people. I’m not saying it doesn’t mean anything for big clubs or athletes because it obviously does for their fans, but Palace winning their first-ever trophy doesn’t mean a lot just for them; it means so much for every fan of every smaller club because everyone thinks that could be us one day. That’s why so many people are interested in these stories.
“I’m a Coventry fan. Those 30 seconds before VAR ruled out our goal against Man Utd last year, and we thought we were going to create the biggest upset and reach the final, were perfect. Nobody can take those 30 seconds away from me. In 1987, when Coventry won the FA Cup, every single person in my city knew where they were. If you ask a Man City fan how many titles they have won in the last five years, they wouldn’t even be able to tell you a number.”
The thought process of a supporter often doesn’t allow us to think rationally. It makes us dream things that shouldn’t be possible and find hope where there shouldn’t be any. Just as we think all hope is lost, we stumble across a video like Conna’s, which makes us believe once again. Sometimes, it feels like an endless cycle, but it’s impossible to stop because we know one day it may be our team’s unbelievable story going viral on social media, inspiring other sports fans and daring them to dream.
Alice Pinion BSc (Hon’s) is an experienced sports mind coach working with professional and amateur sportspeople from all sports, ages, and levels, from those up-and-coming in their discipline to national and world champions and Olympians. As a multi-qualified therapist and sports mind coach, she’s worked successfully for over 20 years with individuals and coaches to overcome mental hurdles in order to achieve true potential in both sport and life. In recent years, Alice has been working specifically with world-class pro and Elite1 darts players to achieve their true potential. Alice is the author of The Essential Sporting Mind Toolkit and an ultramarathon open water swimmer.
