When we think of sports, we usually think of disciplines such as football, basketball, running and tennis. However, the boundaries of what can be defined as “sport” are much broader. Here are some of the strangest sports practiced in the world today.
It all started with curling
Football, basketball, gym workouts: These are some of the most practiced sports in the world, but they are definitely not part of sports. strange galaxy of absurd disciplines We are about to comment on it. In fact, you can’t really compare a tennis match with, say, an underwater hockey match. To make another comparison, you want to combine a five-a-side football match with a boxing chess match… no comparison!
Sports has always been full of truly incredible options; Some are just established, others have centuries-old traditions. Curling, for example, was considered a frivolous oddity for many years, but soon ceased to be a quintessential “weird” sport It will even be among the Olympic disciplines.
Fireball football and the weirdest sports in the world
The origins of curling are said to date back nearly 700 years, even to Scotland in 1500. Two paintings by the great Dutch painter Pieter Bruegel the Elder, dating back to 1565, depict workers training during their rest hours. wriggling wriggling. After all, they really were Scottish immigrants will spread the game to Canada At the beginning of the 19th century: today 90% of practitioners from all over the world live in the North American country.
Among the most unique sports disciplines in the world, there is undoubtedly chess boxing: as the name suggests mix of chess and boxing. The match is played over six 24-minute chess rounds interspersed with five rounds of boxing lasting 3 minutes each. An illegal break leads to a knockout or checkmate victory.
We find evidence of this oddity in London in the 1970s, but to find a clear reference point we must conclude: Cartoonist Enki Bilal Who included it in his 1992 graphic novel Freddo Equatore. From there, the idea of codifying and organizing the rules came to Dutch artist Iepe Rubling. make it a real sportWhich today has over 2000 practitioners worldwide.
Continuing on the topic of sporting oddities, we can’t help but mention Wellie Wanging. throw rubber bootsA discipline practiced in Finland since the 19th century and became popular in England in the 1970s. There is even a world championship being held today, and the world record in men’s rubber boot throwing of about 68 meters belongs to Finnish Teppo Luoma. Sarı Tikkon, the women’s world record holder who threw her boots 40 meters away in 1996, is also Finnish. The rules of the game require men to roll 43 numbers and women to roll 38 numbers.
Buzkhashi, where you challenge each other with goats
Let’s move to a whole different level of weirdness by talking about Buzkashi, which is considered a practice bordering on absurdity in the eyes of us Europeans, a historical discipline in Central Asia and even the national sport in Afghanistan, Kyrgyzstan and Kyrgyzstan. Kazakhistan. It is a sport like the central element is the carcass of a goat or calf.
It is traditionally played on horseback in the desert steppes and requires the dead animal to be lifted from the ground at a gallop by one of the riders facing each other and then attempt to carry it to a designated area. as a kind of goal for football. This is not a team sport, you play against everyone Therefore, when one of the players on horseback seizes the carcass, the others position themselves in front of the door and try to block his way.
When necessary, participants try to prevent the attacking player from leaving the carcass, even using a whip against both the rival rider and his horse. The themed award is a great honor to a horse as well as the surrounding community. Definitely, Not the favorite game of animal lovers.
Finally a Underwater hockey undoubtedly deserves a mention. Two teams, each consisting of 6 players, move at the bottom of the pool and try to free dive and send the puck at the bottom of the pool to the opponent’s goal. Considering you’ll be taking turns surfacing to capture the area before continuing the game, you’ll need to take a lot of breath and have great team coordination. This latest strange sport, also known as Octopush, was born in England in the 1950s and has been played in Italy since 1997.
