Strangest ever televised sports

[Gert from the Well]

Have we done this yet? I'd like to nominate the following:

a) European billiards league - saw this on Eurosport 2, Porto vs Marseille IIRC. The table had no pockets so you could only score with cannons which meant that the gaps between shots were filled with endless repeats of the previous shot
b) Backgammon - again another Eurosport 2 classic. All I can really remember was the novel split screen format which showed the whole board and the dice. There were also two commentators!!
c) Some German sport that involved riding a motorbike up a very steep hill, sometimes in fancy dress.

[ursus arctos]

I give you ESPN the Ocho

https://www.espn.com/espn/story/_/id...schedule-guide

[Gert from the Well]

I give you ESPN the Ocho

https://www.espn.com/espn/story/_/id...schedule-guide

Fucking hell - the world's premier Sasquatch calling contest

[ursus arctos]

We go big over here

[Walt Flanagans Dog]

I presume that ESPN still show the 4th July hot dog eating contest live from Nathan's in Coney Island?

[Hot Pepsi]

I presume that ESPN still show the 4th July hot dog eating contest live from Nathan's in Coney Island?

They do. In fact, I think they may literally own the competition, but I'm not sure.

[MarkF]

Cornhole Championships

Um. No.

[Kevin S]

To this day I had assumed ESPN 8 The Ocho was made up in the Dodgeball movie. So it's actually a real thing, then?

[Hot Pepsi]

It was made up for the film, but then ESPN made it real this year to fill airtime during the pandemic.

[Toby Gymshorts]

TLMG and I still laugh at the memory of the time we returned to our hotel room in Rome - fairly late at night - and discovered competitive ballroom dancing being shown on Eurosport. So far, so not-all-that-strange, I guess.

Until you factor in that the (English) commentator was:

a) clearly in a studio far away from where the actual competition was being held
b) completely ignorant of ballroom dancing, competitive or otherwise (I mean, I'm with him on that but this is his job, you might expect him to have done some research) and
c) absolutely ripped to the tits on booze.

It. Was. Hilarious. His complete lack of knowledge combined with the fact he was pissed as a pudding made for the best commentary I've ever heard. I might think I'd dreamt it if TLMG didn't completely corroborate events.

[slackster]

This thread is bound to get around to The Indoor League soon. Shove 'Appeny was never so exciting. You can still see reruns on some obscure freeview channel, I believe. I'll see thee, indeed.

Another peculiar made-up UK saturday sports programme filler I remember from that time: target golf.

[Sporting]

Grandstand


BBC One London, 16 December 1967 12.45

Synopsis


12.55 Table Tennis
1.15 Football Preview
1.20 Target Golf
1.35 Table Tennis
1.50 Target Golf
2.0 Rugby Union: Barbarians v. New Zealand
3.45 Table Tennis
4.0 Fight of the Week
4.30 Table Tennis
4.40 Results Service
These timings man be altered by events

[Jah Womble]

World of Sport was more your go-to for weird sports, though.

I can remember Dickie Davies introducing bicycle-football at least a couple of times during the seventies.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cycle_ball

[Rogin the Armchair fan]

In what way did target golf differ from normal golf?

[Sporting]

No putting, I think, just pitching at a series of circles as in archery.

[Rogin the Armchair fan]

Oh right. As an aside I've always wondered why javelin and discus don't have some kind of "target" element to them, as well as just how far you can chuck something.

[longeared]

You'll be able to watch cycleball for real in Glasgow at the 2023 world championships.

ITV4 has a "Best of World of Sport" programme that gets wheeled out of the archives periodically. The 1970s episode includes cycleball, competitive lumberjacking and canal vaulting (basically pole vaulting over a canal, popular in the Netherlands)

[Satchmo Distel]

Javelin and discus have a target in the sense that there's a zone within which the object must land.

Indoor League's iconic sport was, I think, bar billiards. Arm wrestling wasn't actually that bad in that there's clearly a physical effort there rather than just mechanical repetition.

[Walt Flanagans Dog]

Not a strange sport as such but a few years ago I was watching an old Superstars on ESPN Classic or ITV4 or whatever and was explaining to my son that these were some of the most famous sports stars of the era, and how you these days you wouldn't have the European footballer of the Year hammering round a cinder track on a bike. I must have bored him into a stupor because when it got to the archery he said "that's stupid, they can't possibly miss that target, it's massive", and I had to explain the wonders of split screen technology to him...

[andrew7610]

I'm pretty sure I didn't imagine this, but I always thought Eurosport UK used to be round-the-clock tractor pulling when it first started out.

[Wouter D]

canal vaulting (basically pole vaulting over a canal, popular in the Netherlands)

It's a local tradition in the province of Friesland, where they're very proud of it. I imagine they wouldn't want to share the honors with the rest of the country. It's goes by the Frisian name Fierljeppen.

[Patrick Thistle]

I realise it's a huge business but televised poker is an odd 'sport'.

[Sits]

I give you ESPN the Ocho

https://www.espn.com/espn/story/_/id...schedule-guide

Stupid Robot Fighting was fun as a one-off.

[Sporting]

Is motorbike scrambling still a thing? Not especially strange, but a regular on Grandstand back in the day.

[Third rate Leszno]

Yes, though of course it's motocross these days. World championship rounds are covered by Eurosport.