From chess fists to wife slings

Sports tomorrow

There is no reason to despair as winter activities are disappearing due to less snow and shorter winters. A strange and fun new sport is ready to take over.

Did you know that oil drilling is very popular in Turkey? The wrestlers smear themselves in oil from head to toe before the bout and each wears shorts made of hippo skin and weighs up to 13 kilograms.

Most of the points were scored by one of the wrestlers placing his hands under the opponent’s shorts and gripping the leather straps which allowed him to grip and control the competitor. You know you are defeated when you lie down with your chest facing the sky.

As you will see from the rest of this article, there are so many amazing sports around the world that not even your imagination is limited.

ACETATE CHEESE

Men run down a hill after a piece of cheese rolls down a hill in Gloucester, England. The annual race is called The Cooper’s Hill Cheese-Rolling and is held every spring. The slopes are 200 meters long and the cheese, which is the Double Gloucester, weighs 3.6 kilograms.

JUGGERS

During the one year anniversary of Berlin’s former Tempelhof airport becoming a city park, Jugger was played between two local teams from Berlin. Jugger has been described as a rough team game that sits somewhere between a ball game and a fight.

NORWAY “TAKE A CHANCE”

From 1983 to 2002, Holmenkollen’s “Ta chansen” garnered thousands of viewers every year. In 2000, the ship “PRILLARGURI” was ready to depart from the Ottobragden kindergarten in Otta in Gudbrandsdalen. ¬The captain is ¬Målfrid Blindheim. The crew struggled with the ¬”launch” not to cross the finish line first, but the ship was awarded the “Gift of Imagination” in return. Today, the event continues to take place in several small Norwegian towns every summer.

WC IN GRIMASSES

England’s Tommy Mattinson has enough wins to be proud of. In September 2002, he was crowned world champion in making the odd grin with a horse harness around his neck. This competition is a regular feature of the annual Crab Apple Fair at Egremont in England. This rather odd competition festival dates back to 1267 and is held according to tradition on the third Saturday in September.

FOOTBALL AROUND THE FIRE

In Indonesia – the country with the largest number of Muslims in the world – Muslims celebrate the country’s Islamic New Year’s Eve by playing soccer around a burning coconut fire. In 2023, Muslim New Year’s Eve falls on July 18.

SEPAK TAKRAW

With impressive acrobatics and high tempo, Sepak Takraw, which many call the wildest ball sport in the world, is slowly gaining a lot of attention in Asia. The sport originates from Southeast Asia and is similar to volleyball except that you are only allowed to touch the ball with your feet, knees, chest or head. This hard and rather hostile ball is made of rattan which is used among other things for furniture.

ZORBING

In the picture you see “zorbing”. This sport simply involves rolling inside a large transparent plastic ball. Ball bearings well so you slide down selected slopes almost completely safely. Zorbing is described by those who know the art as a form of competition that is perfect for birthdays, corporate parties and, of course, bachelor parties. A large transparent sport and ball found in New Zealand where this image originates.

CHESS BOX

This form of competition combines chess and boxing. The match lasts 11 rounds, six rounds of chess and five rounds of boxing.

After each round of traditional boxing, the gloves are removed and a chessboard is placed in the center of the boxing ring. The competitors then put cotton in their ears and plugged in their own headphones. Tungrock is played at high volume so that the players do not hear the crowd shouting suggestions of where the pieces should be moved.

There are five different ways to win a checkboxing match: KO, checkmate, referee’s decision, throw in the towel, or have one contestant spend more than 12 minutes moving.

MAN AGAINST HORSE

In horse-mad Wales in England, peanut butter maker Whole Earth Peanut Butter has been organizing an annual marathon since 1982. What sets it apart from regular marathons is that here runners compete on foot against riders over rough terrain. The distance is just over 38 kilometers.

OIL FRACTURE

You may not know that Turkey’s national sport is not football but a match between two wrestlers who are covered in oil from head to toe before the start of the match. In this picture, the wrestlers named Ismail Balaban and Mustafa Tas and they are wrestling during the fourth World Nomads Games in history which was held in the sport’s homeland of Turkey.

BIKE BALL

Dominik Planzer of Switzerland and Yosuke Fujita of Japan fight over the ball during the World Cup cycling match in Hong Kong. This is an indoor ball game on a court 11 meters wide, 14 meters long and surrounded by a 30 centimeter high glove. Bicycle ball is played by two teams of two cycling ball players each playing against a goal that is two meters wide and two meters high. The ball is a dense cloth that you don’t kick, but moves with the wheel. The sport requires a special bicycle that can go both forward and backward. It is a fast moving sport and best players are characterized by amazing bike stunts. If you thought this was just a newfangled indoor sport in this snow-poor winter, you’d be wrong. Bicycle football originated in the United States in the 1890s and WC has been held since the 1930s.

HELPING THE WIFE

The world’s elite in bringing wives usually compete with each other in Finland when the world champion is about to be announced. A team consists of a man and a woman, where the man must get the woman through a specially constructed obstacle course in the shortest possible time. The sport was first launched in Sonkajärvi in ​​Finland. Annual competitions are held in Sonkajärvi, birthplace of the sport, where first prize is the woman’s weight in beer, and in the Finnish town of Marquette in the US state of (Upper) Michigan. The WC title very often goes to the Finnish pair.

CAMEL JUMPING

There is probably only one place in the whole world where the great camel jump and the best are local heroes. It is located in the Tehama region on the west coast of Yemen. Camel jumping is a traditional sport here. And it’s getting more and more popular. During the competition, the camels are placed side by side and whoever jumps the most wins wins. The jumper swinging the three camels pictured is called Bhaydar Muhammad Kubaisi.

The article was originally published in Vi Menn no 06 2023