While U of T covers most of the major sports and a handful of less popular ones, some truly bizzare athletic competitions failed to make it to the schedule. For your consideration, here are some weird pastimes that will hopefully make The Varsity’s cut in the coming seasons.
Cheese rolling
What started as a pre-Roman fertility rite eventually became an annual event in Cheltenham, England. Every year the townsfolk congregate upon Cooper’s Hill and competitively roll small wheels of Double Gloucester cheese down the hill. The winner of the event receives…a large wheel of Double Gloucester cheese!
While the event might come off as tame, don’t let its innocence fool you. Ten years ago, 18 of the 20 contestants were injured, and four had to be hospitalized. By comparison, only eleven people were injured in the running of the bulls in Pamplona, Spain the same year.
Ferret-legging
Often misidentified as rodents, the ferret is actually a carnivore with such bretheren as badgers, weasels and otters. Even so, many have taken these curious, furry animals as pets. While the domesticated ferret is a social and gentle animal, wild ones have earned the nicknames “shark-of-the-land,” “piranhas with feet,” and “fur-coated evil.”
Back during the age of ferreting, fur-trapping poachers often would use ferrets as hunting animals. When crossed by a gamekeeper, the poachers would hide the creatures in their pants to avoid getting caught. Thus the sport of ferret-legging began.
Initiated in Yorkshire, England, the participant must tie shut a pair of white pants (to better show the blood) at the ankles, then have a hungry ferret dropped into his pants, and have his belt tightened at the waist. Who ever can endure the beast the longest wins.
Other rules: No jockstraps, underpants, or tight trousers, as the ferrets have to be able to move freely from ankle to ankle. They have to have a full mouth of teeth, none of them filed or clipped, and both you and the ferret must be sober.
72-year-old Red Melor holds the record for longest duration of “keepin’ ’em down” with the time of five hours and twenty-six minutes. The Guiness Book of World Records refuses to recognize the achievement.
Cow fighting
While bullfights are popular in much of the world, citizens of Switzerland have found their own unique twist on the violent and bloody sport. The Swiss pit pregnant female cows against one another-despite the fact that there is no natural desire to fight in the animals. So docile are the lumbering quadrapods that they can’t even be prodded into a rage.
Much of the time the cows moo, drool, kick the earth, or engage in shoving matches to see who will lead the herd.
Even so, every October the tiny town of Martigny have their annual cow fight. While the spectacle is on the dull side, the Swiss participants are enthusiastic over the event. The winner of the contest is named “Queen of the Alps,” an honour that is quite lucrative for the owner. Calves of the winning cow sell for as much as $25,000, ten times the price of an ordinary calf.
Rat racing
While many tracks will take your bets on horses and greyhounds, in some private clubs in Moscow, Russia, you could take home a bundle if you pick the right rat.
One club, the Grand Dynamo, trains rats to race through a neon-lit, glass-encased racecourse. After taking in the bets, with a ten dollar minimum, the bell rings and the rats are off.
Rat baiting
An even more popular practice was rat baiting, which has dwindled since its heyday in the 1800’s, but is still practiced today in Eastern port cities. A promoter would hire youngsters to trek to the waterfronts and trap the biggest rodents they could find. Each rat would be tagged, caged and starved until ravenous. Then they were all placed in a pit, and spectators would bet on which would last the longest.
Tomatoes and oranges
Italy and Spain have much in common with each other, one being their fondness of fruit festivals.
The town of Ivera, Italy celebrates the beginning of Lent every year by throwing upward of 400 tons of unpeeled, overriped oranges into a crowd of 4,000 citizens. The event commemorates the the local peasant’s struggle against tyranny during the Middle Ages.
Annually, dozens of people are hospitalized with broken noses, fractures, bruises and eye injuries, with a handful suffering permanent vision loss.
In the village of Bunol, Spain Tomatina has gone on every August for the last 50 years, beginning spontaneously when locals got so fed up with the mayor and town priest they pelted them with the abundant fruit. 25,000 Spaniards hurl over 250,000 pounds of ripe tomatoes at each other for an hour until a firework goes off to end the event. Then everyone starts cleaning.
Goldfish swallowing
Started in 1939 by a freshman at Harvard University, goldfish swallowing began, surprisingly, as a dare. For $10 young Lothrop Withington, Jr. gobbled up the live fish. Then he did it again, in front of a packed dining hall. Word got around, and three weeks later Frank Hope, Jr. at Franklin and Marshall College in Pennsylvania topped the record by swallowing three goldfish in one sitting. Then another student bested Hope’s record by swallowing a dozen fish. So it went, from university to university, with the record reaching 300 live fish in one sitting.
The craze was put to rest after a report from the U.S. Public Health Service warned that many goldfish contain tapeworms that can lodge in the intestines.
