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Unknown Sports

Cecilie Nag

Most people like sports.  Everyone chooses a kind which he or she enjoys most of all.  It doesn’t matter whether a person enjoys sports as an athlete and regularly trains or just enjoys watching a broadcast of some game on TV or watching a sporting event live in a stadium.  Among the most popular sports are football, basketball, baseball, hockey, skating, and skiing.

But have you ever thought how many relatively unknown sports exist? After searching for this information, I was greatly surprised! So, let me share with you four unknown kinds of sport. They are very unusual, unpredictable and kind of funny or even bizarre.

One of them is called “Koppball.” It’s a British game and consists of carrying a ball in a cup that should be scored in a goal as in football. It is run by the International Kopp Ball Association (or IKBA).  Koppball can be considered the modern reconstruction of an ancient Celtic game that hasn’t been played for 2 thousand years. IKBA has modified it and wishes to get it back on its feet. For the full rules of the game, you can go to www.ikba.webs.com.

The second obscure sport is Chessboxing, which is a hybrid sport, combining (as you can see from its name) chess with boxing in alternating rounds. This sport was invented by Dutch artist Iepe Rubingh, who was inspired by a French comic book “Le Froid Equateur” by artist and filmmaker Enki Bilal. The match begins with a four-minute chess round and is then followed by three minutes of boxing, with rounds of chess and boxing alternating until the end. There is a one minute break between rounds. Speed chess is used, a form in which each player has a total of only twelve minutes for the whole game.

There is two more and very funny ways in which people compete and entertain themselves and others.  The first one is so called “Wife Carrying”. It is a sport in which male competitors race while each carrying a female teammate. This kind of sport was first introduced at Sonkajärvi, Finland. The male is supposed to carry the female through a special obstacle track in the fastest time. Several types of carrying may be practiced: piggyback, fireman’s carry (over the shoulder), or so called Estonian-style (the wife hangs upside-down with her legs around the husband’s shoulders, holding onto his waist). The prize in this game depends on the wife’s weight in beer.

The last unknown sport (the funniest in my opinion) is “Ferret legging”. This sport seems to have been popular among coal miners in Yorkshire, England. The male-only contestants put live ferrets inside their trousers; the winner is the one who is the last to release the animals. If you’d like to look at it in more details, you may find out that competitors tie their trousers at the ankles before placing two ferrets inside and securely fastening their belts to prevent the ferrets from escaping. Each competitor then stands in front of the judges for as long as he can. Competitors cannot be drunk or drugged, nor can the ferrets be sedated. In addition, competitors are not allowed to wear underwear beneath their trousers which prevent the ferrets from having free access from one leg to the other, and the ferrets must have a full set of teeth that must not have been filed or otherwise blunted. The winner is the person who lasts the longest. The world record is five hours and thirty minutes.If some day you become bored with popular and widespread kinds of sports, you have many alternatives at your disposal.

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