Bizarre Sports Events

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Bizarre Sports Events » 22 Articles

Article Title: Three and a Half Ton of Bull

Festival Name: San Fermin - Running of the Bulls

Festival Country: Spain

Festival Type(s): Bizarre, Party, Sport - Bizarre

My stomach was churning, my palms sticky, my heart smashing at the inside of my ribcage. I put on a brave face. Strange to think that I'd paid to be here.

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Article Title: Cooper's Hill Cheese Rolling

Festival Name: Cheese Rolling

Festival Country: England

Festival Type(s): Bizarre, Sport - Bizarre, Traditional

I never expected to spend my May Bank Holiday weekend as a participant in one of Europe's wackiest and most dangerous events, but there I was, perched atop a huge, steep, bumpy hill in Gloucestershire as an entrant in the third race of the day, about to throw myself down after a piece of rolling cheese.

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Article Title: Cheese Rolling in Gloucestershire

Festival Name: Cheese Rolling

Festival Country: England

Festival Type(s): Sport - Bizarre, Bizarre, Harvest

Wherever it's origins it's hard to argue that cheese rolling is a sport for the outrageously courageous or at least the dangerously demented. Contestants in the Cooper's Hill event (between Gloucester, Stroud and Cheltenham in the Cotswolds) on the last Monday in May, stand precipitously at the top of a 300 yard hill, that maintains a gradient of two in one for the most part whilst a Master of Ceremonies counts them down.

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Article Title: Calcio Storico

Festival Name: Calcio Storico

Festival Country: Italy

Festival Type(s): Sport - Football, Sport - Bizarre, Bizarre

Steeped in almost 500 years of tradition and described loosely as a mix between football and rugby - with a good dose of bare-knuckle boxing added to the mix - Calcio Storico is not a game for those who flinch at the site of blood.

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Article Title: Irish Road Bowling

Festival Name: Irish Road Bowling

Festival Country: Ireland

Festival Type(s): Bizarre, Sport - Bizarre, Sport - Ball

They call it "bowling," yet it has nothing to do with glossy white pins, oiled wooden lanes, or shoes, colorfully designed for humiliation, that have been worn by a dozen other strangers that day. Welcome to the wacky world of Irish Road Bowling.

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Article Title: World Championship Rotary Tiller Race

Festival Name: World Championship Rotary Tiller Race

Festival Country: USA

Festival Type(s): Bizarre, Sport - Bizarre, Sport - Motor Sport

According to the PurpleHull Pea Festival in Emerson, Arkansas (population 359), the Weyerhaeuser 200 World Championship Rotary Tiller Race is the "highlight of the tiller-racing season." Considering it's the only tiller race around, the "Tiller Thriller" is indeed a highlight.

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Article Title: Mower Racing

Festival Name: Mower Racing World Championships

Festival Country: England

Festival Type(s): Bizarre, Sport - Bizarre, Sport - Motor Sport

An English rally-car racer, frustrated by the rising costs of his sport, debuted the event in 1973: Lawn-mower racing offers an inexpensive, accessible event with no lingering misgivings about whether or not to bag your clippings.

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Article Title: Outhouse Racing

Festival Name: Outhouse Classic

Festival Country: USA

Festival Type(s): Bizarre, Sport - Bizarre, Community

With the advent of indoor plumbing, traditional outhouses suffered a tragic fate: They were mounted on skis and pushed down a hill - welcome to the wacky world of outhouse racing

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Article Title: Wife Carrying

Festival Name: Wife Carrying World Championships

Festival Country: Finland

Festival Type(s): Bizarre, Sport - Bizarre, Party

At the Wife Carrying World Championships held annually in Sonkajärvi, Finland, it's the husband who does the schlepping - the wife holds on for dear life - across a course that's over two-and-a-half football fields in length and punctuated with sand, hurdles, water obstacles, and gravel pits

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Article Title: Toe Wrestling

Festival Name: World Toe Wrestling Championships

Festival Country: England

Festival Type(s): Bizarre, Sport - Bizarre

Every year, competitors from as far as the United States, Canada, Australia, and Germany travel to the Bentley Brook Inn in Ashbourne, Derbyshire, England, for the world's least furtive and most aggressive game of footsie: The World Toe Wrestling Championship

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Article Title: Elephant Polo

Festival Name: Elephant Polo World Championships

Festival Country: Nepal

Festival Type(s): Sport - Bizarre, Bizarre, Animal

This sport, played exclusively in four countries - India, and the three-members of Elephant Polo Association: Thailand, Sri Lanka, and Nepal - presents all the challenges of pony polo, plus plenty of problems particular to playing perched upon pachyderms.

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Article Title: Shrovetide Football

Festival Name: Shrovetide Football

Festival Country: England

Festival Type(s): Sport - Bizarre, Bizarre, Party

Imagine an NFL football game. Now, round out that ball, lose the shoulder pads, and add a few hundred or even a thousand players to each team. Okay, now move the end zones three miles apart, and dam a river at the 50-yard line. Now you're ready for some Royal Shrovetide Football

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Article Title: World Sauna Championships

Festival Name: World Sauna Championships

Festival Country: Finland

Festival Type(s): Bizarre, Sport - Bizarre

The best competitions make leisure into sport, like turning an afternoon of watching flicks into a movie marathon. In Finland, where there are 1.5 million saunas for 5 million people, organizations of World Sauna Championships did just that with the first competition in 1999.

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Article Title: Frozen Dead Guy Days Festival

Festival Name: Frozen Dead Guy Days Festival

Festival Country: USA

Festival Type(s): Bizarre, Sport - Bizarre, Winter

No trip to Colorado would be complete without attending the strangely-bizarre, Frozen Dead Guy Days Festival in Nederland held annually in March

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Article Title: World Pillow Fighting Championships

Festival Name: World Pillow Fighting Championships

Festival Country: USA

Festival Type(s): Bizarre, Sport - Bizarre

Anyone over the age of 14 can enter as long as they leave their maturity outside the arena. Competition begins by straddling a slippery wet pole suspended over a pit of mud.

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Article Title: World Championship Kinetic Sculpture Race

Festival Name: World Championship Kinetic Sculpture Race

Festival Country: USA

Festival Type(s): Bizarre, Sport - Bizarre

World Championship Kinetic Sculpture Race - A kinetic sculpture is an imaginative, often wacky - but always ludicrous - contraption designed to travel along an obstacle course on land, through mud, and over deep harbor waters

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Article Title: Roach Racin'

Festival Name: World Championship Cockroach Racing

Festival Country: Australia

Festival Type(s): Sport - Bizarre, National, Bizarre

Only in Australia would they celebrate their national holiday by racing cockroaches. Yes, that's right I'm talking about those pooey brown, hairy legged, skin crawling, under the fridge indulgers and lights out kitchen partiers that infest much of the land Down Under.

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Article Title: Santa Run

Festival Name: Santarun

Festival Country: Wales

Festival Type(s): Sport - Bizarre, Christmas

Surreal was not the right word. The sea of crimson that stretched behind me deserved something more than that. This was more of a crazed hallucinogenic trip, a dream that I could wake up from at any second. This was either the work of a madman or a genius. But, as they say, 'when in Rome...'

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Article Title: Siena Palio

Festival Name: Siena Palio

Festival Country: Italy

Festival Type(s): Sport - Equestrian, Sport - Bizarre, Traditional

It was Palio, the biggest event in a Sienese year. When the local contrada's (districts) take to the track with their finest horses and race for a coveted silk banner. When horses become Gods, passions are high and the square fills with the excitement of a race for glory.

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Article Title: Bathtubs on the River

Festival Name: International Regatta of Bathtubs - La Regate des Baignoires

Festival Country: Belgium

Festival Type(s): Bizarre, Sport - Bizarre

The hot sun of a mid-August day beats down on a motley flotilla as it makes it way down the River Meuse through the town of Dinant, Belgium. One of Europe's lesser-known festivals, La Regate des Baignoires, the International Regatta of Bathtubs, was, as the local tourist board cheerfully admits, a promotional stunt dreamed up to bring visitors to this sliver of a town wedged between steeps cliffs and the Meuse River about an hour from Brussels.

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Article Title: Charleville Camel, Donkey and Yabbie Race Festival

Festival Name: Charleville Camel, Donkey and Yabbie Race Festival

Festival Country: Australia

Festival Type(s): Sport - Bizarre, Bizarre, Party

Whilst travelling through Central Queensland we heard of the upcoming Charleville Camel, Donkey and Yabbie Race Festival and felt we just had to be there. We made a dash to Charleville risking life and limb, travelling at night through the kangaroo infested outback.

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Article Title: Camel Wrestling

Festival Name: Camel Wrestling Championship

Festival Country: Turkey

Festival Type(s): Sport - Bizarre, Bizarre, Sport - Combat

While the Spanish have bullfights, and the Italians cockfights, and the English go hunting with hounds, the Turks have camel wrestling.

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