You know it better as the race Lance Armstrong turned his body into a mobile chemistry lab to win a bunch of times.
I heard of leagues where the loser has to wear nothing but a Speedo, dress up as a woman, dress up as a clown, get waxed, get shaved, and swallow a tablespoon of cinnamon while getting slapped in the face by a fish. You heard me. Slapped in the face by a fish.
Because professional sports have never shied from choosing money over dignity, it's entirely possible to grease your awkward slide into professional athletics with hundred dollar bills.
These films demonstrate such a fundamental misunderstanding of sports that even watching them will make you embarrassed on behalf of everyone involved.
Many pro wrestlers nowadays craft their ring personalities using some mixture of barbarian aggression and homicidal machismo. But back in the 1980s, things were vastly different.
These fans, after paying good money to watch the sporting event, couldn't just sit down and enjoy the athletic showcase they came to see. They had to make it all about them.
Clearly, these guys are really, truly insane.
At the end of it all, a man with a Marine Corps tattoo, and who I privately suspect was just a pile of biceps crammed in a windbreaker, gave us each a headband and a beer while explaining that we were part of something bigger than ourselves now. But we knew better.
It turns out that every sport has an 'anything goes' period in its history when insanity was just par for the course.
When people think about how scientists can help them be better at sports, they're probably thinking about what cocktail of steroids they can take that won't show up on a urine test. The truth is actually way more legal.
To what deranged depths will man sink due to his need to be the best at something, even if it's completely pointless and insane, before he says, 'OK, that's enough'?
Here's some common questions asked by people new to football (well, mostly me) answered by someone who doesn't know anything about football (also me).
It turns out that when the performing wrestlers are both huge and insane, one accident can escalate play fighting into the real thing pretty quickly.
For most of the last century, wrestling fans believed every storyline and bit of pageantry as the God's honest truth, and if you made your living as a wrestler, it was your sworn duty to protect the illusion at all costs.
If the explorers who pen these guides, and whose careers I've surely saved, wanted to name a snow-capped mountain after me, I certainly couldn't stop them.