People have been playing sports for about as long as we’ve been doing anything. Sometimes these games are straightforward and elegant: get the ball in the net using only your hands; get the ball in the net using anything but your hands; hit the ball with the bat, etc.

But there’s nothing our species can’t unnecessarily complicate. So, of course, there are also weird games, created for reasons of tradition, boredom, or insanity.

It’s not just adults trying to figure out the best way to cosplay Harry Potter. It gets weirder (and, luckily, much more charming) than that.

Chess Boxing

Exactly what it sounds like. Game-creator Lepe Rubingh conceptualized the sport at a bar when a friend challenged him to a friendly boxing match. Both had been training for several years. Lepe, inspired by whatever he had drank that night and a comic he had read, proposed throwing down some chess between rounds. And a sport was born.

The rules of chess boxing are simple: 11 rounds, six of chess, five of boxing, alternating. The boxing rounds are three minutes, and the chess rounds are four. A match is won by checkmate or knock out, whichever comes first. In case of no knockout and a draw at the chessboard, an extra round of boxing is added. If there is still no knockout, the boxing points decide the match winner.

The first official chess boxing match was held in 2003 at a church in Amsterdam, featuring Lepe and his friend from the bar. After a grueling 11 rounds Lepe became the first chess boxing world champion with a win on points in the boxing match.

Competitions for world titles are held around the globe and the sport continues to grow, a vote of confidence for our civilization’s future.

Bog snorkeling

A peat bog is a very dense type of wetland that accumulates dead plant material, preserves dead bodies, and can fuel pleasant-smelling fires. For the World Bog Snorkelling Championship, held every August in the particularly dense Waen Rhydd peat bog in Wales, a trench is cut through the earth, and contestants in flippers, snorkels, and diving masks attempt two consecutive 55 meter lengths in the shortest possible time, relying entirely on flipper power.

Bog snorkeling enthusiasts converge from around the world. The current record was set in 2018 by Englishman Neil Rutter, clocking in at an impressive 1 minute and 18 seconds. There are also spinoff events, such as the Bog Snorkelling Triathlon: after 120 meters in the bog, contestants do 20 miles on a bike.

Proceeds from the well-attended World Championship go to a local charity every year, because a few minutes snorkeling through a bog really gives you a new perspective on what’s important.

Cheese rolling

This sport requires a steep hill, a roll of cheese, and hunger. An event known worldwide now thanks to several instances of semi-virality, cheese rolling hails from a small English village called Brockworth. There, down the very steep grade of Cooper’s Hill, in the wake of a quick-rolling wheel of Double Gloucester, participants run, fall, injure themselves, find regret or glory, with one lucky winner taking the wheel home in the end.

A sport as simple and elegant as this one is bound to have a long history, and it does. The first record of cheese rolling dates to 1826, and in it the tradition is said to already be long-standing. Some estimates (not verified or verifiable) age the sport at over 600 years. The exact origin of the activity is not perfectly clear, but likely relates to some combination of grazing rights and pagan ritual.

Today, it is an annual springtime spectacle drawing spectators from around the world (iShowSpeed in 2024). A number of concessions have been made to very valid safety concerns, such as temporarily replacing the cheese wheel with a foam replica. This seems lame until you hear that the real wheel reaches speeds upward of 70 mph and keeps knocking spectators unconscious. But it wasn’t as fun without it, so they switched back. What’s a concussion to a six century tradition?

Extreme ironing

EI is the abbreviation for this extreme sport which features better pressed shirts than anything Red Bull sponsors: Extreme Ironing.

Simple as it gets. Take an ironing board to an extreme location and get that shirt right. Some doubt it is a ‘real’ sport. But it has a bureau: the Extreme Ironing Bureau.

Invented by an exhausted and downtrodden worker who, after a long shift, could only bring himself to do his ironing chores if they were combined with his leisure of choice (rock climbing), extreme ironing has taken to the skies, the seas, the motorway, and even spawned spin-off sports such as Extreme Cello Playing.

Slap Kabaddi

Kabaddi is a widely played sport with a storied history in the Indian subcontinent. A synthesis of many ancient games, the modern iteration basically boils down to one player attempting to tag as many opposing players as possible without getting tackled.

But there are variants. One in Slap Kabaddi. This Pakistani variant shares basically nothing with the conventional version. Instead of 7-vs-7, it’s one on one. Instead of a scoring system based on tagging and territory, in Slap Kabaddi you just get a point if you land a slap successfully. People love it.

Ostrich Racing

Ostriches can get up to 43 mph. Not when there’s a person on their back though. The first person to want to race Ostriches was probably the first person that saw an Ostrich run. But the sport of Ostrich Racing only has solid records running back a few hundred years.

In the past, strapping the birds to wagons was the common method. These days, jockeys (or other sub-150-lb individuals) ride directly on the bird, ‘featherback’ style.

The activity actually used to be more popular in the US. Concerns about safety, animal welfare, and the rise of other modes of racing shrunk the appeal. But you can still catch one at the Virginia Fair.

Shin-kicking

The closest the English get to martial arts. The late Cotswold Olimpick (sic) Games featured shin kicking as a major attraction. Those games died in the 1800s but the sport lives on.

Back in the day contestants would hit their shins with hammers on off-days to build tolerance, and even wear steel-toed boots into matches. Alas, shin-kicking has suffered the NERFing of combat sports everywhere, and contestants now are required to wear soft shoes while paramedics stand by.

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