White Widow was entered into the Cannabis Cup and won it in 1995. Was it the original who knows. But a strain called White Widow did win the cup in 1995.
Just rely on a little logic. Shantibaba and Arjan owned Green House Seeds. Arjan handled the marketing and advertising, Shantibaba did the breeding. Green House Seeds entered the Cup winning strain known as White Widow.
So between Shantibaba and Arjan, only Shantibaba could have been the creator.
Consider the Ingemar story. Do you believe that a breeder who came up with such an impressive strain, allegedly years before Shantibaba, would have just sat on it? Why wouldn't it be marketed? Why wouldn't it be entered into competitions? Doing so would defy all logic. And in the case of the alleged Ingemar creation, the lineage is a secret, it's like Colonel Sanders secret eleven herbs and spices commercials of the past. Why might Ingemar's alleged creation be a secret recipe? Maybe because if he claimed it to be what it actually in people who knew and worked with him at the time might come forward and say how he didn't have those strains in his breeding stable at the time, if eve, and could not have created it. And if he picked strains he had and claimed those are what were used if anyone attempted to create a knockoff based on they they would never come anywhere close. So the only way to protect the Ingemar myth is to keep the secret recipe a secret.
Something else to consider, if Arjan created White Widow and Green House Seeds does have the original, why have Green House Seeds information about the THC percentage varied so widely over the years? If you have followed the White Widow story since the breakup you would have seen Green House Seeds advertise THC percentages for it's White Widow as low as 12%, as high as 22% and now, at least on Attitude's site, Green House claims 20%. I have seen 18% also claimed in Green House Seeds information. When it was a new strain test results came back in the 20% to 22% range. Why would Arjan later market it as low as 12%, or use anything other than 20% to 22% or just 20% or just 22% if he had the original that tested between 20% and 22%? The only thing that makes any sense is as Green House Seeds desperately tried to make a knockoff that would at least come close to the potency of the original that some fell short and by a large enough amount that had higher THC percentages been claimed anyone who grew it would know it was being overrated, that the percentage claimed was a lie. So as progressively better knockoffs replaced the earlier failures the advertised THC percentages climbed. The original White Widow would not have dropped by 8% to 10% and then slowly climbed back to 20% and being the moneygrubbing person that Arjan is he would never have so grossly undersold the potency of the original.
Others have laid claim to having created the original White Widow. I read an article some years back where De Sjamaan claimed to have created the original and said that cuttings must have been stolen from him and the strain entered in competitions and marketed before he could market his alleged original.
The more confusion that is created by people who do not know what happened and the more people that say, well, this is possible, or, that is possible, and who says, who knows, opens the door for more and more breeders to claim they created the original and that some nefarious deed was performed and they were cheated out of the fame, glory and riches, or it gives them the chance to be able to claim to being the one and only who has the true original.
The result of so many people not accepting the truth is that every day growers pay for seeds they have been fooled into being the original White Widow, and even if the knockoff they get is good, they were still ripped off because they paid for one thing and received something else.
BTW, the story seems very logical to me.