The 6 weirdest sports invented

In the good old days, sports were supposed to be activities aiming to improve physical and mental strength, while simultaneously providing entertainment. Aiming to prove that the good old days are not always right, we have some sports which look like they come straight out of a funny yet strange dream. What is surprising is that such sports do exist and also invite willing participants.

#6: Wife Carrying Race

Before you jump to conclusions that the man pictured above is rescuing his wife from some horrible apocalypse, let me tell you that ‘’wife carrying’’ is a widely followed sport in Scandinavian countries. The female being carried might not necessarily be the carrier’s wife, but she is supposed to be carried quickly through challenging obstacles all the same. One might be tempted to choose a size-zero figured woman as his partner but in many competitions, the prize is beer, the amount of which is directly proportional to the female’s weight.

#5: Joggling

Joggling, as the name pointedly suggests, is a competitive sport that combines juggling and running. The objects being juggled must number no less than three and if you drop an object, you are supposed to return to the point where you dropped it and then continue. Also, the same juggling pattern is to be strictly maintained during a race.

Weird though the sport seems, I can hardly bring myself to mock the exponents of this game. The last time I tried juggling, the balls settled in four different corners of the room and the last time I tried to run a race, my lungs screamed bloody murder. Whatever you say, it would require an insane amount of skill to attempt both at the same time.

#4: Chess Boxing

There are some facts that we just believe to be true: the sun rises in the east, kittens are cute, Mario Balotelli is crazy and so on. One such axiom is that brawny boxers are not quite likely to be interested in intellectual pursuits and that serious chess players are not suitable candidates for physical fights. Chess Boxing is a sport that smacks this logic right in the face. Alternate rounds of boxing and rapid chess are held and a game is won by pulling off a checkmate or a knockout, failing which the cumulative points are considered.

It is widely known that boxing causes permanent brain injuries and hence it would not be too preposterous to assume that the chess games in this sport may not be of the highest quality.

#3: Cheese rolling

An annual sporting event held in Gloucester, England, cheese rolling involves people sliding down a hill to catch a huge cylindrical piece of cheese. This sport is considered very risky, and rightly so, because rolling down the hill is something that the human body is not built for. Broken bones and concussions are very common and so is the likelihood of a spectator being hit by the rocketing cheese that is aided by gravity.

Things continue to get more baffling when you consider that the prize for reaching the cheese first is the cheese itself. Call me cynical but if someone enjoys cheese that much, the most prudent course of action is buying some, rather than risking the delicate structure of one’s spine.

#2: Bog Snorkeling

Bogs are stinky and slimy abominations of nature that are to be avoided at all costs. At least that is what conventional wisdom would dictate. However, if you are a bog snorkelling aficionado, conventional wisdom is something that you have probably renounced anyway.

Competitors are supposed to complete two laps of a 60 yard section of malodorous bog wearing conventional swimming gear. I suspect that participants’ families must be denying entry to them for at least a week and I find no reason to blame them if they do.

#1: Quidditch

I unabashedly admit the fact that I was a huge Harry Potter fan as a kid and as a teenager, along with zillions of my contemporaries. However, I never quite lost grip of the fact that Hogwarts was a fictional universe and that things like wands and spells were best left to novels and films. Some university students evidently thought differently and as a result we have this:

J.K Rowling visualized Quidditch as an aerial sport which is acceptable since her wizards have flying broomsticks. But when has a lack of flying ability suppressed the will of enterprising humans? Just hold a broom between your legs and voila, you are playing Quidditch. Any attempt to explain this sport in words is a fruitless exercise and a video is a must. If you do manage to make any sense out of it, congratulations for possessing a very flexible grasping power indeed.