As long as man has existed, he has sought things other than the pursuit of bare survival. Ever since the first cavemen kicked around the severed head of a tribal enemy for fun and contest, sport has existed.
Records, from cave paintings to stone tablets, describe sporting contests and games since the beginning of human history, and now, in the year 2021, we have more sports than ever. Pretty much any activity can be cobbled together into some sort of formal league with standard rules, and this is where the call of journalism has directed me. I present to you readers, in no particular order, a list of the oddest sports I could find, which people currently still play, worldwide.
Now, this sounds almost like it ought to be some sort of Tron-like spectacle, but it, in fact, dates back well over a hundred years.
You see, it began in 1893 (if you can believe that) by some Germans who thought polo would be fun but did not want to pay what a horse costs just to play it. How is it played? Well, it’s really nothing at all like polo, so I dunno what the Deutsch Brothers were thinking.
The game is actually more like soccer, except it’s played on fixed-gear bicycles with no brakes. Oh yeah, and there are only two players on the floor per team, with one keeping goal and the other trying to score. Rules are also vaguely similar to those of soccer, in that you cannot touch the ball with any part of your body except your head—or your bicycle. Penalties apply if your feet touch the floor. Polo, indeed. Had the creators ever seen polo being played? Is it possible that they’d just heard someone describe it once and got it all wrong? We shall never know, I suppose, but CycleBall is growing in popularity across Europe and in Japan. It’s only a matter of time before we see it in North America, so brace yourselves.
Speaking of things that are a lot like soccer, we come to the sport of Buzkashi, AKA Goat Pulling, AKA Goat Grabbing, AKA Goat Dragging. It all depends on who’s translating and from what language. You see, this one hails from the far-off lands of the ancient Orient, where it originated among Turkic nomads between the 10th and 15th centuries. That’s some historical provenance, for sure!
How is this played, you might ask? Is the poor goat hurt? Relax. The goat is, in actuality, already dead before the game begins, having been decapitated a short time prior. The dead goat, which is basically the "ball" in this game, serves as the central item of concern in a contest between two teams of 10-12 people on horseback (or sometimes YAK-back), who must grab this dead goat and place it in a goal on one end of the playing field. Rules say you must stay on your horse/yak at all times and that you can use your horsewhip on other people’s horses/yaks, but not the people themselves. You are also required to hold on to the goat with your own arms or legs, and you cannot fasten it to your steed in any way. Other than that, pretty much anything goes. Nowadays, it is primarily played in Afghanistan, where it is their national sport, and draws huge crowds of tens of thousands. Hey! This one is actually more like polo than soccer, now that I think about it.
Starting in the early 1970s at the Angel Fire Ski Resort in New Mexico, resort workers would sit on snow shovels and use them as improvised sleds to get from point A to point B faster than walking. It sort of blew up a bit after that, with the peak of its fame being an event at the 1997 X Games (which I recently learned is still a thing) in which a competitor got seriously injured, and the sport was thereafter banned. It still exists quietly in various places, with the resort which began it all still playing host to the world championships. I’ve never wanted to go upwards of 70 mph (112 km/h) on a shovel before, but I kind of do now.
You’ve probably seen this, but neither know how it’s played or what it’s called. Zorbing is when you get into one of those giant inflatable hamster balls, or, you guessed it, zorbs, and roll down various inclines in order to achieve superior distance and/or speed. In the group zorbing variant, you must try to come in first in a race, and you’re not supposed to ram other contestants. It’s not all that exciting to describe, though it certainly seems like it would be fun to do. It is primarily included in this list, so we’ll all finally know what to call that shit.
No, you do not wrestle the camels; they wrestle themselves. How do you get them to do this, you ask? Well, it seems that if you trot a sexy female camel in front of two males, they’ll compete for her affections. What does this competition look like? Surely it must look like wrestling, right? Well, the answer there is "kinda." Much like your uncle’s second wedding, it mostly looks like two large, snorting ungulates trying to beat each other to death with their necks. They do this in the wild, too, so they’re not coerced into something unnatural, and a top-deck wrestling camel can be sold for over $20,000 USD after a few victories. It remains unknown if they let the victor have the camel poon after they win or if it’s all a big tease.
Okay, so regular bog snorkeling is odd enough, but mountain bike bog snorkeling definitely caught my eye. In the sport of bog snorkeling, contestants must swim through a meter-wide trench cut into a nasty peat bog, for roughly 55 meters, in an attempt to get the best time. Swim? Okay, no. You must wear a snorkel, mask, and flippers but are not allowed to use proper swim strokes; instead, relying on the flippers to get it done. In the mountain bike version of the sport, instead of flippering your way through, you are atop a modified mountain bike and pedal your way through the sludge, with your eyes typically barely above the surface of the bog. I guess when you give a Welshman nothing to do for a while, you’re gonna get this sort of thing. There are dozens of leagues across the globe.
It is unknown when this sport first originated, but I would wager dollars to doughnuts that it came about as the result of excessive alcohol consumption.
For you see, ferret-legging is when you stick two ferrets down your trousers, tie off the ankles, and cinch your belt tight. You "win" by lasting the longest before letting them out. Rules are as follows: the ferrets cannot have been tampered with. That means no drugging, no blunting their sharp little teeth, or any other such foolishness. Also, the competitors cannot be drunk or drugged. You really must feel this ferretry going on all up in ya pants. Oh, and there’s one more rule: you cannot wear underpants. Yup. The name of the game is Freeballin’ in Ferret Land, with all the attendant risks to your tackle. Also, despite the recent gender equality trends, there is sadly no women’s version, though this was attempted in the mid-2000s, where the animals would be interred in a lady’s shirt, but this was discontinued due to lack of willing participants.
So, there’s my list. I wanted to fit chessboxing in there, but it’s all mainstream now that the Wu-Tang wrote a song about it. I am on my way to find my local goat pulling league.
Be a good sport!
-WStM
-Wombstretcha The Magnificent
Wombstretcha The Magnificent isa semi-professional ferret-legger, ape taunter, mustard enthusiast, writer, and semi-retired rapper from Portland, OR. He can be found at Wombstretcha.com, on Twitter as @Wombstretcha503 and on Facebook (boo!) and MeWe (yay!) as "Wombstretcha The Magniflcent."
