When we think of the world's great sporting events, we tend to
focus on spectacles such as the World Cup, the Olympics, the Derby,
the Monaco Grand Prix or the University Boat Race. Yet there is
also an alternative world of competition where participants risk
life, limb and often dignity for meagre rewards in truly weird
sporting pursuits. Step forward the Indonesian sport of sepak bola
api, a variation of football in which the barefoot players kick a
ball that is on fire; Germany's Mud Olympics, at which competitors
play soccer, volleyball and handball while knee-deep in mud; yak
racing from Mongolia; Oregon's Pig-N-Ford Races where drivers speed
around the track while carrying a live pig under one arm; and
Australia's variation of the Boat Race, the Henley-on-Todd Regatta,
where, instead of rowing, teams carry their boats along the dry bed
of the River Todd. This book lists geographically the world's 100
weirdest sports events, giving full details of their rules and
colourful history. They include the grotesque (the national sport
of Afghanistan is buzkashi, in which riders on horseback aim to
drag the headless carcass of a dead goat towards their opponents'
goal), the dangerous (Japanese hardcore wrestlers batter each other
with glass fluorescent light tubes instead of their bare hands),
and the downright daft in the form of the World Black Pudding
Throwing Championships, the World Flounder Tramping Championships,
the World Gravy Wrestling Championships and the World Shin-Kicking
Championships. Races are staged in all kinds of transportation.
Canada is home to the Great Klondike Outhouse Race (for portable
toilets), the Vancouver Bathtub Race, and the Windsor Pumpkin
Regatta; Colorado hosts the annual Emma Crawford Coffin Races; and
the pride of Yorkshire is the Great Knaresborough Bed Race, where
teams push a bed (containing human occupant) along a 2.4-mile
course that requires a wet crossing of the River Nidd. Animals
feature heavily, too. As well as traditional races for ostriches
(complete with jockeys), cockroaches (no jockey required),
armadillos, sheep, and Oklahoma City's splendid Dachshund Dash,
rubber-duck racing is one of the fastest growing sports of recent
years with events being held in several countries. Other
competitions test an animal's ability to do more than just run or
float, such as elephant polo, dog surfing, camel wrestling, rabbit
show jumping and pig diving. It is not beyond the realms of
possibility that in the near future we may even be treated to
synchronized pig diving. Although the plunging porkers might
disagree, the appeal of many of these sports is enhanced by taking
part. If cheese rolling or volcano boarding are too energetic for
your taste, ice golf or underwater hockey too uncomfortable, and
lingerie football wouldn't show off your legs to best effect, you
could always enjoy more leisurely pursuits like the world
championships in rock, paper, scissors or pooh sticks. If, on the
other hand, you prefer a watching brief, you could try your hand at
cow patty bingo, a North American contest where a field is divided
into numbered squares, and contestants bet on which square the cow
will take a poop. It is probably the only occasion in life when you
can make money from one number two on top of another.
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