Sitting in our apartments with our loved-ones, watching the games on our flatscreens, we sometimes forget that sports are kind of strange. Think about it; baseball involves hitting small spheres with sticks and running really hard to get back to where you started. Basketball is full of players who continually passing the ball to themselves before trying to drop it through an elevated net. And then there’s curling. But despite how bizarre most sports end up being when you take an objective step back and really look at them, there are some that are played throughout the world that make even curling seem positively conventional by comparison. These games often involve convoluted rules, insane locations, and the very real possibility of debilitating permanent physical injury. Interested in learning more? Here are 10 of the strangest sports played across the globe.
1. Underwater Hockey (Octopush)
If you’ve ever watched the intensity and violence of hockey and thought to yourself Hmm. This is nice, but I sure wish there was a possibility of someone drowning, then have we got a sport for you! It’s called ‘underwater hockey’ (or sometimes ‘octopush,’ if you’d rather be cute about it), and you can think of it as hockey played underwater with very short sticks. A weighted puck is scooted across the bottom of a pool by opposing teams who are attempting to get it into the opposing goal… and that’s basically how it goes. There are a few other important rules you’d need to know if you were to want to compete, but honestly, if you can master struggling against other players while moving a submerged puck across the floor of a pool without your lungs filling with water, the rest should come naturally.
- Bossaball
‘Bossaball’ is what volleyball would be like if it were directed by John Woo. Basically, it starts like any other volleyball game: You’ve got two teams separated by a net, and they try to hit a ball onto the ground on the side of the opposing team. Simple, right? Well, add a specially designed inflatable jumping-surface complete with a couple of honest-to-goodness trampolines, and things get crazy fast. Players soar through the air like angry demigods and smash the ball with all of the force of a contained hurricane. And, as opposed to being limited to using only their hands, competitors are encouraged to use any parts of their bodies that they can—and the more flare they show in their moves, the better. In fact, the game is generally played to a heavy bossa nova beat (hence the name bossaball), and often looks more like a choreographed dance than a sport. The referee even doubles as a DJ. Currently, the Netherlands is the only country with a professional bossaball league, but amature leagues can be found throught Latin America, Europe, and the Middle East.
- Wife-carrying
It may sound misogynistic, but ‘wife-carrying’ is actually a beloved and much-respected test of strength and endurance in many countries around the world. It originated in Finland, and consists of competitors attempting to make their way through a specially designed obstacle course. The one to complete the course with the fastest time is declared the winner, and is awarded his wife’s weight in beer. Why is that? Well, because a competitor who runs the course does so with his wife slung over his back. Thus, the heavier the wife, the more valuable the potential prize. Wife-carrying World Championships have been held every year since 1997, and draw in contestants from all over the world, but its history can be traced back even further to the late 1800s, when local robbers would sometimes steal women from villages and carry them away on their backs against their will to become their wives. Hmm. Maybe wife-carrying is a little misogynistic after all…
4. Chess Boxing
Most people who’ve played board games know what it’s like to want to throw a fist across the table and feed their opponent his own teeth. Well, now they can—sort of—with ‘chess boxing.’ Chess boxing is an amalgamation of two different sports (you’ll never guess which ones), but rather than have punches being exchanged while pawns and bishops duke it out on the board below, the game actually alternates between disciplines. It consists of 11 rounds, six of which are chess, and five are boxing. Players start by playing chess for three minutes, after which they step into the ring, and box for three minutes. They continue to alternate back and forth until checkmate is achieved, a knockout or technical knockout occurs, a player withdraws from the game, or the last round concludes (at which point the player who has earned more ‘points’ during the boxing rounds is declared the winner). So, if you’ve got a lot of confidence in your chess game, but not as much confidence in your ability to survive getting punched in the face, then you had better aim for a quick checkmate in those first three minutes…
- Bo-taoshi
When you get right down to it, most sports are basically just arm wrestling. Think about it; Take away the equipment and the special uniforms and the strategy, and what you’re left with is a simple struggle of muscle against muscle. So, why not embrace that fact and magnify it? ‘Bo-taoshi’ is a sport played in Japan that does just that. It consists of two teams of 150 players each. The teams then each divide into two groups of 75 player—one group acting as offence, and the other group acting as defence. On the field there are two poles, one for each team. Once the game begins, the teams’ offensive groups attempts to bypass the opposing teams’ defensive groups and knock down their pole. What this amounts to is a crowd of 150 players surrounding each pole, straining against each other to gain some advantage. Sure, there’s a bit more strategy involved, but not quite as much as you might think.
- Muggle Quidditch
No, not that quidditch exactly. But while it may not involve magical flying or possessed sports balls, the real-life version of Harry Potter’s favorite game is actually a bit less believable than its fictional counterpart. In ‘muggle quidditch,’ players run at full speed around a field, avoiding dodgeballs and attempting to throw a ‘quaffle’ through one of the goal-hoops. There’s also the issue of the ‘Golden Snitch.’ In the books and movies, the snitch is a tiny, intelligent, flying ball that can move and change direction at lightning speed. In real quidditch, this part is played by a ‘snitch runner’—an unencumbered player who has a tennis ball in a sock tied to his or her belt , and who is able to run all over the field. If one of the team’s ‘seekers’ manages to catch the snitch runner’s tennis ball, then that seeker’s team gets 150 points and the game ends. And, so that the sport stays faithful to its source material, this is all done while straddling broomsticks (and hopefully while wearing cups). Sound difficult to follow? It is. It’s also becoming very popular, with leagues in 12 different nations across the world.
- Toe Wrestling
Have you ever stubbed your toe on a protruding piece of furniture? Well, if you have, then you know just how fragile and sensitive those little piggies can be. Now, imagine that same feeling, but instead of a single jolt of pain followed by a dull throbbing ache, it’s a prolonged wrenching spasm of anguish that only ends once your entire foot has been forcibly “pinned” to a mat—and that’s only the first round. What you’re picturing is called ‘toe wrestling,’ and is a British variation on a medieval sport that has been resurrected in modern times. Basically, it involves a pair of competitors locking the big toes of their barefeet and attempting to “wrestle” the other player’s foot down and pin it for three seconds. The game is played best-two-out-of-three rounds, so if you want to prepare to be able to compete, you’re going to want to work up some endurance to toe pain. We recommend hitting those tiny appendages against as many coffee tables as possible.
- Royal Shrovetide Football
When you attend sporting events, do you wish longingly from the stands that you could just rush down onto the field and join in all the fun? If you find yourself in Ashbourne, in Derbyshire, England, on Shrove Tuesday or Ash Wednesday, then you may just get the chance. Once a year, the line between spectator and athlete becomes blurred, when almost every resident of the town comes out to enjoy a friendly game of, well, for lack of a better term we’re going to call it football, but that doesn’t really do the event justice. Allow us to explain: The town divides into two teams—those who live on the north side, and those who live on the south side. The two goals are located three miles apart on opposite sides of the town. The game begins when a ball is released in the center of town… and then all hell breaks loose. The goal of the game is to get the ball to the other team’s goal. Doing so requires a 1.5 mile endurance march, every step of which is contested by the hundreds of bodies that are doing their best to push the ball back in the opposite direction. As for rules, well, murder is prohibited, and ‘unnecessary’ violence is generally frowned upon, but beyond that there’s really nothing keeping the otherwise amicable residents from zombie-trampling each other for possession of the ball. Oh, and the game lasts for eight hours, two days in a row.
- Sheep Counting
Sometimes sports have fanciful names that describe the event taking place in abstract terms. ‘Sheep counting’ is not one of those sports. In fact, sheep counting is exactly what it says on the label. A participant takes position, and then approximately 400 sheep are driven past them as fast as possible. The player then attempts to count the constantly surging and churning wool-covered bodies as accurately as possible as they run past. Other players do the same thing, and the one whose count comes closest to the the actual number of sheep is declared the winner. Why is this crazy? Well, try counting the number of snowflakes that fall past your nose the next time you’re stuck in a blizzard, and you’ll understand.
- Cooper’s Hill Cheese-rolling and Wake
Most of the sports on this list are a bit insane. Some are even dangerously so. However, none of them can hold a candle to the sheer suicidal-lunacy demonstrated every year during the ‘Cooper’s Hill Cheese-rolling and Wake.’ Held near Gloucester, England, the event is not so much of a sport as it is a social phenomenon. Contestants gather at the top of Cooper’s Hill—a steep, hole-filled and often-wet and slippery incline that seems specifically engineered to break the legs and shatter the vertebrae of any poor soul who attempts to descend it. Then, a round block of Double Gloucester cheese is rolled down the hill. One second later, the runners start their race. Ostensibly, the goal is for one of the runners to actually catch the renegade cheese wheel as it careens down the hill at speeds upwards of 70 mph. Of course, in reality, the goal of every runner is to make it to the bottom of the hill without becoming a grotesque piece of modern art. It doesn’t usually go well. Bodies fly and tumble and crash like bowling pins dropped out of a moving car on the freeway. Ambulances wait at the bottom of the hill to cart away the injured, and have to make constant runs back and forth between the nearest hospital throughout the entire event. Honestly, we can’t stress enough just how dangerous the whole thing is. After all, it’s called a wake for a reason. Even spectators aren’t always safe, with some having been injured by falling competitors, or even by the ballistic missile that is the cheese itself. If the cheese isn’t caught on the way down (which it never is), then the first person to reach the bottom of the hill—conscious or otherwise—is declared the winner of the race. And what prize could possibly be worth risking one’s own life while running full-speed down a treacherous hill?
Cheese. The winners get to keep the cheese.
No, on second thought, maybe curling really isn’t crazy at all.