The 8 Most Baffling "Sports" From Around The World

Where:

Sussex, Kent

What is it?

A game of dexterity, skill and terrifying amounts of booze, a mixture that we've always found to end in absolute happiness. According to the Friends of The Lewes Arms pub, one venue where the game is played, the rules of the game are impenetrable and the result is always contested. They say that because the competitors are always roaringly drunk by the time the game ends.

Two teams play the game. One member of a team, the flonker, stands with a beer-soaked rag on a stick whilst the other team links arms and dances around him, a practice known as girting, for reasons apparent to only those who have spent their adult life drinking ale.

The flonker spins around in the opposite direction to the others and has to fling the rag at them. The girters have to dodge the rag. Points are scored if the rag hits someone, but if the rag misses, the flonker has to drink a chamber-pot's worth of beer.

The game is over when four rounds are finished, or when everyone is so drunk that any movement might cause them to vomit noisily or urinate uncontrollably. Points are deducted if anyone is sober enough to remember their gender at the end of the game.

Origins:

Dwile Flonkers claim that the game was invented either in the nineteenth century or sometime in the middle ages. Sober people say it was invented in the 1960s by a bunch of people with too much time on their hands.

Interesting Fact:

As with most English rural sports of questionable origin, dressing up like an idiot is a requirement.

Where:

Switzerland

What is it?

Some claim it's a cross between baseball and golf, but in reality it only has a passing similarity to either. The game is played by teams of up to eighteen on a very long, straight field. A launcher, a curved metal ramp, is at one end, by which a player stands. He smacks a small rubber projectile, the hornuss, from the launcher with a long, bendy stick that looked like a fishing rod.

The hornuss can reach speeds of two hundred miles an hour, and can fly for up to three hundred yards. It zooms off straight towards the members of the other team, who are all standing on the field waving placards and wearing helmets.

The other team has to biff the hornuss out the air my hitting it with a placard. But because of the hornuss' small size and quick velocity, it's very hard to spot, leading to lots of comical running around with oversized wooden placards until someone sees the hornuss flying straight at their soft, pink, squishy flesh. At this point they panic and fling their placard up into the air and run away. And then whole thing starts again.

Points are scored if the hornuss hits the ground without having being stopped by a placard or someone's face.

Origins:

Hornussen was developed in the early seventeenth century. It's unclear whether it was invented as a sport or, as a minority claim, as a method of warfare. All we can say is if the latter is true, it's probably for the best that the Swiss have sat out every major war since.

Interesting Fact:

The name derives from the German word for hornet, because of the buzzing noise the hornuss makes as it flies through the air. We would have thought a better name would be "Meine Hoden!" for the inevitable cry a player makes when he fails to spot the hornuss until impacts his balls.

Where:

The Alps, though it has spread to the US.

What is it?

Skibobbing is a winter sport, in which competitors go down very steep snowy hills on a bike on skis. So it's like skiing, which itself can be pretty dangerous, only multiplying the danger by a magnitude of stupid because the bike doesn't appear to have any way of stopping.

We've watched videos and it appears the only thing to do on a skibob is to go really, really fast until you either run out of hill or crash. It would not surprise us in the slightest if the creator of the sport was an undertaker in a small Alpine town who fancied some extra business.

Origins:

The modern skibob stemmed from a patent made in 1892 by an American called John Stevens. Stevens patented the idea of a bicycle where the front wheel was replaced by a ski.

We imagine his last words were "hey guys, look at this thing I made! Check out how cool I look!"

Interesting Fact:

Skibobbing became popular in the 1950s when they were used as transport across the Alps, possibly as an effort to steal the 'Most Retarded Way of Crossing the Alps' trophy from Hannibal.

Where:

Turkey

What is it?

Not to be confused with sports like bear wrestling, in which a man with huge balls goes up against a bear, camel wrestling is a Turkish sport in which two male camels slug it out. The Tulu Camels are specially bred for the competition, and decked out with bells and colourful ornamentation. They're then sent into the ring with another camel to do battle over a hot camel-babe in heat.

The results are usually highly amusing.

Camels can win by either making their opponent fall, scream or gallop away in a comical leg-flapping manner. Trainers try and install carious fighting methods in their camels. These include wrestling from the right or left, tripping the other camel or one camel trapping the other's head against its chest and then sitting down. A camel's grasp of advanced fighting practices is notoriously poor, however, and thus it seems they just clatter around, banging into each other until one topples over.

Origins:

Camel wrestling has been popular in the Aegean region of Turkey for centuries. No one quite knows when it began, though some speculate it has been around since the caravan and nomadic periods. We think that it began when two camel traders got bored and likely drunk.

Interesting Fact:

Because of the presence of a camel-babe, the male camels often get incredibly aroused, which culminates in a lot of viscous spittle and excitable urine being sprayed around the arena. For some reason, ringside seats never sell that well.

If you can draw and think like a child and want $50, head to the forum and show us The Presidential Election As Drawn By a 5 Year-Old.

Or, if you didn't follow the link in the intro, check out last year's The 10 Most Insane "Sports" From Around the World. Or for a look at the bizarre foods foreigners use to fuel all that bizarre activity, check out The 6 Most Terrifying Foods in the World.