Graeme Thomson
Here's a list of the 7 strangest sports championships. Feel free to add more!
Arm-wrestling for foot fetishists! What could be better? Thanks to those crazy Derbyshire folks, there’s a whole competitive world of locked-toe wrestling to be experienced. (Just make sure, before you lie down in the ring, you wash off the toe-jam first!)
Most people have heard of The Boat Race: Oxford and Cambridge university 8s racing annually along the Thames in London. What a bunch of over-privileged soft, southern pansies! If you’re looking for a real man’s boat race, get yourself off to North Yorkshire! There, with only the addition of a little waterproofing varnish, you can take part in a meaningfully competitive water sport by paddling your way to victory in a vessel constructed out of flour, milk, and eggs!
OK, it’s not exactly bull-fighting, but mosquitoes kill a fuck of a lot more people every year than bulls. According to the World Health Organization, mosquitoes kill around 1 million people every year. Whichever way you look at it, the little bastards have got it coming to them; as even Ernest Hemmingway would admit. Sadly, though, the World Mosquito Killing Championship is limited to just one single 5 minute bug-swatting round. The current world record stands at 21.
If you think the good people of Derbyshire are strange, just head south and west to Gloucestershire where you can join any number of curiously suicidal fellow participants in order to charge at full speed down a laughably steep hillside in pursuit of an 8 lb wheel of Double Gloucester cheese. The winner gets the cheese. But of course.
Nothing says domestic bliss quite like the World Wife-Carrying Championship. Held each July in Finland, husbands attempt to traverse a grueling 253 meter, rough terrain obstacle course while carrying the distaff half of their marriage upside down over their shoulders. Allegedly, the major corporate sponsors are all divorce attorneys.
Bog definition: “wet spongy ground of decomposing vegetation; has poorer drainage than a swamp.” Think, liquid mud. What, therefore, could be more natural than wanting to snorkel in it? Only one thing! Wanting to snorkel in it competitively! And where could be more natural for competitive 60 foot stretch of bog snorkeling than in Wales?! Never mind your crystal clear Caribbean waters; get your snorkel out!
In this sport, so much a rich part of the rich fabric of Iberian heritage, competitors wearing costumes evidently borrowed from the demon king in a pantomime take it in turns to leap over rows of live babies. Quite why this isn’t an Olympic event is an utter mystery. The viewing figures would be awesome!
