Sports you’ve never heard of: Toe Wrestling
1, 2, 3, 4, I declare a thum-…wait, a toe war? Toe wrestling, different from thumb wrestling, but similar to arm wrestling, is an official sport in the United Kingdom. Although unusual and relatively unheard of, toe wrestling has been around since 1976, starting in Wetton, Derbyshire. Patrons of ‘Ye Olde Royal Oak Inn’ decided to hold a toe wresting competition the same year, and ever since, the world championships have been occurring annually.
Sports you’ve never heard of: Underwater Ice Hockey
Years ago hockey was played without protective head gear, but then it got to be too rough, so players wore helmets. Later, visors and shields were used to protect the players from injuries to the eyes and face. But these protective measures are not used in the “minor extreme” sport of Underwater Ice Hockey, a kind of hockey where skates are not worn, because the ice is located above the players’ heads and the momentum of the puck will never seriously injure a player.
Sports you’ve never heard of: Globe Riding
Straight out of New Zealand – home of nude rugby – comes the latest transportation sensation that’s sweeping the nation: globe riding. The sport came to be in 1994, when Andrew Akers and Dwane van der Sluis invented a giant inflatable ball that people could climb inside of, which they initially intended to use for walking on water. However, they soon discovered how much fun the balls were to just roll around in on land, and started a company to begin marketing the product – which they deemed a “Zorb” – to the public as a sport.
Sports you’ve never heard of: Maggot Racing
If there is one thing I know for certain about my gender, it’s that we men love to gamble. There is no situation, no circumstance that is too sacred to be spiced up with a couple of bets, a little high-stakes action. I mean, think about it. What’s the first thing the Roman soldiers did after crucifying Jesus? Why, cast lots for his clothes of course. Never mind that they’d just murdered a presumed deity, what the Romans really wanted was a gambling fix. It makes perfect sense… if you’re a guy. Everything in life has the potential for competition, and everything competitive can only be improved by adding betting.
Sports you’ve never heard of: Yukigassen
The snowball fight is a timeless winter tradition. Every year, kids across the snow-receiving countries of the world gather to build forts, mould snowballs, and pelt each other with icy snow. The appeal of this parent-approved violence is so great that in some snowless countries, kids have resorted to using elephant dung to achieve similar satisfaction. Apparently kids aren’t the only ones who harbour a secret desire to imagine themselves lords of a battle fort, hell-bent on the destruction of the forces of evil that threaten their realm – adults also feel the need to pummel each other with icy balls, although they get more organized and high-tech about it. Enter Yukigassen, from the Japanese yuki, meaning snow, and kassen, meaning battle.
Sports you’ve never heard of: Outhouse Racing
Humans require a few things to survive: food for nourishment; liquid to quench our never ending thirst; rest to recover our bodies; and a place to secrete our waste. The latter has always been a cause for much anguish when away from a bathroom for a long time. Thus the outhouse was invented: a small building with a hole dug below it that acts as a bathroom anywhere it’s needed. It’s really a brilliant invention, arguably rivaling the aqueducts of Rome, but in the true modern tradition, men and woman alike looked at an object and said, “What else could I use this for?”
Sports you’ve never heard of: Nude Rugby
Nudity and professional sports have far more in common than many people are aware of. For example, the word “gymnasium” actually comes from the ancient Greek word “gymnasion,” which literally translates to “school for naked exercise.” As if that wasn’t enough, ancient Greek Olympics also had the players perform totally nude – both as a celebration of the male body and as a tribute to the gods – with the exception of the few who wore leather penis restraints called “kynodesmes,” which means “dog leash.” Some even went so far as to daub themselves with olive oil to enhance their appearance, much like modern-day bodybuilders (and vain beach-dwellers).
Sports you’ve never heard of: Cheese Rolling
Competition seems to be ingrained into the human psyche as much as the need to eat and breath. This would explain why humans have invented all manner of games in which we may compete against each other for supremacy. Popular modern methods, such as basketball and football, are often designed to test the limits of human capability. Games range from the extremely odd to the outright stupid. Some sports come from traditions, often in rural communities, such as the nearly 200-year-old sport of cheese rolling.
Sports you’ve never heard of: Polar bear swim
Real polar bears don’t mind the cold. Perhaps that’s what the human fans of yearly polar bear swims are trying to attain with the annual tradition of hurling themselves into freezing water. In Canada, the polar bear swim (also known as polar bear plunge or dip) is celebrated on New Years Day. At the Vancouver polar bear swim, most participants register, although they don’t have to. Registering, which includes a donation of food to the Food Bank, gets you a small amount of swag and the fuzzy feeling that your contribution is going to people in need. But is this fuzzy feeling enough to keep you warm in the wintry water? In short, no: most polar bear swim participants leave the beach shortly after the dip for the warmth of their showers or hot tubs.
Sports you’ve never heard of: Chessboxing
Chess and boxing are two sports that don’t seem to have any natural affiliation. In one, two stereotypically nerdy opponents come together in a battle of wits while seated comfortably across from each other at a table. In the other, two muscle bound opponents attack each other with their fists in a show of strength and endurance. In fact, the only thing the two competitions appear to have in common is the hand-shake at the end of the match. That is, of course, until the two activities were merged in what can only be referred to as chessboxing!
Sports you’ve never heard of: Extreme Roundabout
Invented on the OLN travel program Departures this new weird sport may just be the most timely we have published in this fine weekly. As you may well have already noticed, Abbotsford is proud owner of many new roundabouts, and we can only assume that this trend will continue. Now, that leaves the question, as our fair city and the entire province blossoms with circular roadways: what do we do with all these merry car-go-rounds?
Sports you’ve never heard of: Ferret Legging
As if last week’s featured sport, noodling, wasn’t dangerous enough, this week we introduce another animal to the world of sports, the ferret. In my opinion, ferrets have always been fear-evoking creatures. Their long bodies, beady eyes, sharp teeth and rodent-esque tendencies are all reasons to never own a ferret. Owning a ferret seems bad enough, but in the sport of ferret legging, the male-only contestants are housing these vermin in their pants.
Sports you’ve never heard of: Noodling
As a child raised out in the country, a favourite past-time of my brothers and mine was to grab ourselves each a fishing rod and head down to the river and go fishing for the day. He-haw! I feel as though my childhood would have been much more interesting if we had adopted a more extreme attitude towards our leisurely activities and scrapped the fishing rod all together and used only our bare hands. If we had relocated to a Southern state and swapped salmon for catfish, we would have possibly been the youngest noodlers to engage in noodling.
Sports you’ve never heard of: Man vs. Horse Marathon
Let’s take a moment to imagine a hypothetical situation. Let’s say that you are a resident of the United Kingdom, in Wales to be exact. Now, imagine that about thirty years ago you went to a pub in Llantwrtyd Wells, which you couldn’t pronounce even before you had a few pints to drink. Now, imagine that at that pub, some guy was boasting about his horse’s incredible athletic prowess; it moved like lightning on the cross-country course. Now imagine that the time this man was bragging about didn’t seem all that impressive to you – in fact, you were quite confident that you, Herculean behemoth that you are, could easily match the horse. Finally, at this point, envision the landlord of the pub offering you the chance to prove it…
Sports you’ve never heard of: Bossaball
The leaves are turning, there’s a chill in the air and Christmas commercials are starting to pop up on television. But instead of focusing on the usual winter sports, my attention is on a summer sport. Imagine a sport that combines volleyball with trampolines, soccer with samba music and a little bit of the Brazilian martial arts dance Capoeira thrown in for show. Enter bossaball, a brand new sport invented in 2005 by a Belgian genius named Filip Eyckmans.
Sports you’ve never heard of: Extreme Ironing
For those of you who really enjoy a neatly pressed shirt and for those of you who really enjoy extreme outdoor activities, but have never been able to combine them, your time has finally come! For more than a decade the semi-professional sport of extreme ironing has been growing in popularity. According to the website www.extremeironing.com, “It all started in the city of Leicester in the UK, in the summer of 1997. When mild-mannered Steam returned home after a long day in the knitwear factory, the last thing he wanted to do was start on a pile of ironing. The sun was shining and Phil preferred the idea of an evening out pursuing his (somewhat unsuccessful) hobby of rock climbing. Then it occurred to him to combine these activities into an extreme sport – the result: extreme ironing.”
Sports you’ve never heard of: The fastest game on grass
Hurling, contrary to what the name might imply, is not a game of championship vomiting after competitive drinking; it’s the traditional Gaelic sport in which you compete before consuming several dozen pints.
Sports you’ve never heard of: Wife Carrying
Wife-carrying is a sport in which male competitors race while carrying a female teammate. To make it even more challenging, the race track includes obstacles including pools of water, fences, and rough terrain. The sport originated in Sonkajärvi, Finland as a joke about the local courting tradition of going to a village, picking up a woman, and carrying her off.
The use of obstacles supposedly originated because of Rosvo-Ronkainen, a famous Finnish brigand of the 1800s who only accepted troops who successfully completed a challenge course, thereby proving themselves. His men were as famous for absconding with women as they were for stealing food and ale.
Women in roller skates
They warn me that I’ve sat in the most dangerous corner. I’ve brought my own lawn chair and I am preparing to watch a bout between two local, all-female roller derby teams, the Anarchy Angels and the Doomsday Bunnies.
Cement flooring in this grungy, industrial warehouse at the Abbotsford Ag-Rec Center, it’s perfect. Even a half hour before the first jam the people have flooded in to circle the taped off race track. What a diverse group of spectators, ranging from children to seniors. Women of different shapes and sizes slide around wearing stockings (fishnet and otherwise), uniforms and roller skates. A man who calls himself ‘The Reverend’ picks up a microphone and addresses the boisterous crowd.
