For those of you who have not seen this yet, it is called Crashed Ice and it is all kinds of awesome. It's a downhill, full contact alpine race on solid ice with no padded boards and YES there are hardcore wipeouts and cheap-shots left and right. On hockey skates. It was held in Quebec this year and draws a monstrous crown to watch it. All I know is after seeing this I want to try it: ...this is even better than watching the psychos on the Glouchestershire Cheese Roll. FOCUS: What are some of your favourite obscure sports and games?
Oh man. This is my thread, I'm fairly certain I play the king of all obscure sports. Underwater hockey, from wiki: Spoiler Two teams of up to ten players compete, with six players on each team in play at once. The remaining four players are continually substituted into play from a substitution area, which may be on deck or in the water outside the playing area, depending on tournament rules. Before the start of play the puck is placed in the middle of the pool, and the players wait in the water, touching the wall above the goals they are defending. At the start-of-play signal (usually a buzzer or a gong), in-play members of both teams are free to swim anywhere in the play area and try to score by manoeuvring the puck into the opponents' goal. Play continues until either a goal is scored, and players return to their wall to start a new point, or a break in play is signalled by a referee (whether due to a foul, a time-out, or the end of the period of play). Going for strike A typical playing formation is the 3-3 (three offensive players or forwards, and three defensive players or backs). Other options include 2-3-1 (i.e., two forwards, three midfielders, and a back), 1-3-2, or 2-2-2. As important to tournament teams' formation strategy is the substitution strategy - substitution errors might result in a foul (too many players in the play area) or a tactical blunder (too few defenders in on a play). There are a number of penalties described in the official underwater hockey rules, ranging from use of the stick against something (or someone) other than the puck, playing or stopping the puck with something other than the stick, and "blocking" (interposing one's self between a team-mate who possesses the puck and an opponent; one is allowed to play the puck, but not merely block opponents with one's body). If the penalty is minor, referees award an advantage puck - the team that committed the foul is pushed back 3 metres from the puck, while the other team gets free possession. For major penalties, such as a dangerous pass (.e.g., at or near an opponent's head) or intentional or repeated fouls, the referees may eject players for a specified period of time or the remainder of the game. A defender committing a serious foul sufficiently close to his own goal may be penalized by the award of a penalty shot or a penalty goal to the fouled player's team. Games consist of two halves, typically ten to fifteen minutes in length (depending on tournament rules; 15 minutes at world championship tournaments) and a short half time interval. At half time the two teams switch ends. Every two years there is a world competition, I've been to one myself and quite a few people in my club, which I'm president of, have been to three or more. The game is played all over the world and is really big in places like New Zealand, Australia and England. Some youtube clips: A video of a game in a Czech tournament. Some guys from New Zealand showing off their puck handling skills. Which leads me to the more obscure of the two sports, Underwater Rugby.
The fact that a Professional Putt-Putt tour exists has me still holding out hope of becoming a Professional athlete.
I like the idea of the Eton wall game. Mostly because the games end up like this. I used to play Butts Up all the time in elementary school. You throw a tennis ball against a wall and then if anyone fumbles the ball while trying to catch it they have to run to the wall while everyone chases the ball down and tries to peg you before you get there.
Curling is my favorite. It may not seem like such an obscure sport to Canadians, but as an American I am intrigued by it. Fuck, I woke up at 4am during the last Winter Olympics just to watch it. Of course it helped that the American Female team was smoking hot, but the sport also intrigues me.
The sport is not exciting in ANY way, but I love it for one fantastic reason: Evryone who plays it drinks beer while playing. Usually when the cameras are rolling you won't see it, but people LOVE getting half cut while curling. Legendary 6'8" Canadian curler Hec Gervais (the Michael Jordan of curling) used to down 10 beers and half a pack of smokes while winning world championship games. THAT is an athlete to root for, kids. I have tried the sport before, and it's frustratinly difficult and downright dangerous when drunk. If you're not watching when one of those 44 pound stones comes your way, I guarantee you'll get your clock cleaned and hit the rock-hard ice like you cannot believe. Also, female curlers are CUTE (or gross). Check out Canada's Kelly Law:
That is Jennifer Jones, not that I would admit knowing anything about curling. Actually those days of drinking during games at the high level, are gone. Some of the young bucks like John Morris, work out continually, and he just wrote a fitness book. I played it semi-seriously and besides taking a good deal of hand-eye coordination you need to have strength and reasonable cardio fitness if you are playing on the front-end. You go from sweeping 4 rocks vigorously then try and get your heart rate down when you go to throw a 40 lb piece of granite 100 feet and hope it stops within inches of where you intended. A lot of people will mock you when you say things about it being a sport, but seriously try it. You want to play at the top levels you have to have skill, strength and fitness.
There's no better obscure sport than that of Freestyle Footbag. It's like hackey-sack except the goal is to do tricks I think it was on the old board that someone posted about Hurling, that is also an amazing sport.
As soon as I saw this I had a flashback from an old article from Cracked.com and had to find it for this thread. http://www.cracked.com/article_16697_the-8-most-baffling-sports-from-around-world.html Including: The British Shin-Kicking Competition Trampoline Volleyball (called "Bossaball") - Belgium And of course, who could forget Camel Wrestling -Turkey The entire article is worth reading simply for there are some that defy explaination... for example, shoving a ferret [or two] down your pants (EDIT - the record is apparently 5 hours and 26 minutes) ...
I was captain of my Ultimate Frisbee team AND I played AAA Football. I call it frisbee and get drunk whenever I play now though, I'm not serious about it. I think I'm going to join my city's semi-pro Ultimate league this season, because apparantly all the teams are super intense and serious which is hilarious because you can't exert direct force onto a frisbee. When you play relaxed you're much more accurate.
I bring you, X-Arm. Created by Art Davie (who created the Ultimate Fighting Championship), it's a combination of Arm-Wrestling and Mixed-Martial Arts. I don't see it catching on, to be honest.
Hurling: <a class="postlink" href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TmzivRet" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TmzivRet</a> ... r_embedded Every other sport pales in comparison. Not only does this look completely awesome, but it is completely lethal and only real men would play this; or really, really insanely fucked up lunatics with decent hand-eye coordination. Rules (from what the video explains so far.) -There are two ways to score: through the goal (3 points) or toss the ball over the post (1 point.) -Any form of equipment or padding is pretty much nonsense and you shouldn't wear it. Sometimes people wear helmets, but that only means you're probably going to get hit in the kidneys with a stick. -You can only take 3 steps if the ball is in your hand. But this penalty rarely ever happens because you'll be pulverized before you can properly grip the ball. -You cannot drop or throw your stick. If you do, it leaves you defenseless and someone is probably going to dig their toes into your bloody asshole. By the way, goalies don't wear protection. You stand and receive a baseball that is being hit towards you. It looks like a lot of fun. It puts lacrosse to shame, looks a lot more entertaining than baseball, and seems physically demanding compared to other sports. If there's someone that knows a channel on TV where I can watch this, please let me know.
My favorite obscure sport is parkour or as I like to refer to it, "that Jackie Chan shit." And parkour on The Office:
This is something i saw first hand while overseas in East Timor and it is absolutely insane the things these guys can do with a hard ball that near breaks a normal person foot. It's like volleyball for ninjas. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sepak_takraw#Ball And then there is Bog Snorkelling, only the Welsh would do something like this.
I give you: Shirling. The greatest (and funniest) sport never invented. Start at 0:30: And of course, guys have a vivid imagination when they're bored:
I read about this cool game in the newspaper quite a few years ago. The only consistent rule is the rules are never the same way twice, and uses various things you may have around the house, such as a volley ball, croquet set, water ballons ect. This game is of course Calvinball... THE greatest game ever.
I once won a game by a score of 17 to Q. I made a decree for my opponent to spin until he fell down, but I was tagged by the babysitter flag and had to sit in the circle of shame.
Sunday night, my friends and I were drunk and bored, so be brought out of our trusty BB Guns. These guns came from a girl I used to fuck who was mad at her ex boyfriend, so they are near and dear to my heart. After running out of things to shoot in my basement, genius struck and we created the game that would define the night: BB Gun Bowling. The game consisted of 10 empty beer cans lined up in a triangle on a stool on the far side of my cellar. The object of the game was to see how many shots it would take us to knock all the cans off of the stool. I hold the world record with 8 shots. The fact that none of us lost an eye while playing still amazes me.
I don't suppose anybody on here used to play a friendly little schoolyard game known as "Smear The Queer" aka "Kill The Guy With The Ball". Simple (and only) rules: One guy runs with the football for his life, everyone else playing tries to murder him. If you throw the ball away in fear, you're a pussy for life. You make the tackle, YOU run with the ball. Oh, to be young and completely sociopathic again.