When talking about sports, most of us might have already heard of basketball, racing, football, soccer, tennis, swimming, running, and rugby, but there might only be a few who’ve heard of wheelbarrow racing or toe wrestling. Want to know more of these bizarre and hilarious sports unheard of? Here’s a list of 25 crazy sports from around the world you probably have never heard of!
1. Quidditch
You might think, “hey, isn’t this the sport from the Harry Potter series?” Yup, it is! And while the characters from the series played this while riding a flying broomstick, the fantasy series’s real-world fans invented a land version where they play in a hockey field. It’s first started by US colleges and has spread all over the states. The game is also referred to as muggle (the non-magic folks in the series) quidditch by fans.
2. Toe Wrestling
Like the more famous arm wrestling, players attempt to defeat their opponents by pinning down their toes for three seconds. Players use their bare feet to play this game. Each match employs a best of three rounds where each player alternates between their right and left feet. The sport is separated into two divisions: men and women. Since the 1970s, the World Toe Wrestling Championship has been going, and participation has grown since then.
3. Chess Boxing
Unlike other sport combinations, this sport involves both brains and brawn. There are 11 alternating rounds of boxing and chess where competitors compete for three minutes each round.
4. Tuna Tossing
The small fishing community of Port Lincoln in South Australia was the mastermind for this sport. They took inspiration from local fishermen tossing fishes with force onto their trucks and then started to use it to make a local festival livelier. The competitor who manages to launch a 20-pound fish the furthest is deemed the winner. To make the competition cleaner, participants now use rubber fish instead of living fish.
5. Wheelbarrow Racing
The country Kenya has a race named after their national park called “To Hell’s Gate on a Wheelbarrow,” which holds a 5-kilometer or 3.1-mile racecourse. The total funds gathered from the event are used for conserving the park.
6. Wife Carrying
This game originated in Finland, where abductions of local women were common, and have now spread globally. Countries competing in the World Wife Carrying World Championship are Australia, the United States, Great Britain, Ireland, Germany, and Estonia. The U.S. team first holds a state championship, and the winners get to participate in the global championship. Despite its title, any team of two people can participate.
7. Extreme Ironing
This extreme sport requires people to take their clothes and ironing boards to any dangerous or remote location to do some ironing. The Extreme Ironing Bureau said that the extreme sport is “the latest danger sport that combines the thrills of an extreme outdoor activity with the satisfaction of a well-pressed shirt.”
8. Cheese Rolling
This is an annual event taking place in Cooper’s Hill Cheese-Rolling & Wake of Gloucester, England. In this event, participants chase after a 9-pound cheese wheel rolling down an incredibly steep hill. The person who reaches the bottom (in one piece) first gets to bring the cheese wheel home with them.
9. Underwater Football
This sport is the underwater version of regular American football. Underwater Football is usually played in a swimming pool. The players, wearing snorkeling equipment, have to get the weighted football to reach the pool’s gutter on the other side.
10. Competitive Worm Charming
The participants in this sport attempt to lure as many earthworms as they can out of the ground within a limited timeframe. There are various techniques that they can use. The most common technique is to tap the ground repeatedly until the earthworms emerge.
11. Pumpkin Chucking
This sport is also called the ‘Punkin chunkin’ and requires participants to send a pumpkin flying through the sky as far as possible using a mechanical device they made at home. The homemade devices are often different from one participant to another. This includes slingshots, gigantic catapults, bolt throwers, trebuchets, centrifugal, and pneumatic cannons.
12. Bog Snorkeling
Come August, more than a hundred swimmers from all over the world meet up in Llanwrtyd Wells to join the yearly World Bog Snorkeling Championships. The participants are required to wear snorkels and flippers. The rule is to swim through the 60-yard trench twice without the use of traditional swimming strokes!
13. Unicycle Hockey
This self-explanatory sport is pretty much just hockey on unicycles. Each team should have 5 players whose feet, at all times, need to be on their unicycle.
14. Log Rolling
This sports tournament requires two participants to balance themselves on a floating log while trying to push the other off. They are not allowed to cross the centerline or make any physical contact. To win, participants repeatedly kick the log to have it bounce or change its direction.