I remember hearing about “Extreme Ironing” (Extreme ironing - Wikipedia) in the late 1990s.
There’s also Ferret-legging - Wikipedia.
At least with Extreme Ironing, it seems like you can have fun while doing it.
Ferret-legging on the other hand…
Yes, those were the objects that were being thrown/slid in the movie. And the women threw them standing up, without any sweeping. Good catch, thanks!
Not to mention the noble English martial art of Shin Kicking.
If you mean On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, they definitely had brooms for sweeping and the stones were like the ones used in the Olympics, not the ones in the photo in the thread (yes I’m sad enough to have just checked the scene in question!).
Mas-wrestling - seems to be limited to Russia and northern Europe. Competitors are seated, with their feet placed on opposite sides of a board placed between them. With both hands on a stick, they attempt to pull the other off-balance.
Мас-рестлинг - Федор Федоров и Виктор Колибабчук - Mas-wrestling - Wikipedia
Lots of YouTube videos - e.g. Mas-Wrestling: Egor Degtyarev VS Roman Iskenderov
I guess the loser either loses their footing on the board, or gets pulled over the board?
It does look like it’d be an interesting mix of strength and agility.
Not just Gaelic Football but hurling. Both have had 82 000 attendances for their All Ireland finals in the last 8 days.
Thinking about sports that regularly get 5 figure attendances, I think it would just be football and rugby, but far more often for football. Golf would infrequently get some, but a huge proportion would be tourists, certainly for the Open.
Athletics, boxing and cricket, perhaps some others, will occasionally get 4 figure attendances, but the sport that regularly does so in Scotland is ice hockey.
I thought of Corn-holing and was sure it would be good but, surprisingly, the game has a following in other countries.
There’s another current thread for Banana Ball, for which there are only six teams, all in the US… but their games are selling out MLB stadiums a year in advance.
The world curling championships are generally won by teams from Scotland or Canada, but some of the top teams are from Japan, China, and Korea (South). Also, maybe surprisingly, there are top teams, both men and women’s, from Italy. Germany is usually competitive. Scandinavian teams (including Finland) used to win too, but less lately. The top Finnish skip was Markku Uusipaavelniemi who won a silver medal in 2006. He mentioned once that even in Finland he is usually called M15.
Interesting, thanks.
Nascar. Certainly car racing, particularly F1, is popular elsewhere, but Nascar seems uniquely popular in America
I was out for a bike ride last weekend and stopped to watch some of the game at a local diamond. It occurred to me that 16" softball encounters is probably not too easy to come across outside Chicago. The balls are soft leather like a gymshoe/sneaker or chamois and loosely stuffed with string and rags. No gloves are worn and pitching is high arching and slow.
How much distance can you even get on a hit, with a ball like that?
A couple hundred feet, max? There are a lot of outfield plays but hardly any homeruns. It’s maybe half the speed and batting distances of baseball. It’s a game that can appeal to the less athletic among us, the balls are easy to hit and field and catch and soft enough that you’re not scared of it. 16 inch softball is infamous for jammed or broken fingers because it’s difficult to judge the wild spin on a hit.
When I was in my late-teen-20s, I kept a ball and couple bats in my car in case a game pops. Today, it’s frisbees.
This music video (Dennehy/Serengeti) is great for a lot of reasons but shows some typical warmups and gameplay.
I’m glad the Wikipiedia article specifically mentioned New Orleans as a place where cabbageball is popular. Around here, in the late 1970s to mid 1980s, it was a popular pick-up pastime for us local youths. I’m sure we weren’t the only crew to allow “red hots” because we didn’t have enough fielders for all the bases (Outfielders? What’s that?).
There was also a ton of organized cabbageball through the local CYO, even adult leagues. It was common to play either in a gymnasium or a marked parking lot (no sliding into bases!). A real full-sized grass diamond was just about too big for recreational cabbageball, though youth fields were alright and would be used sometimes.
I haven’t walked by a twilight church-lot game of cabbageball in decades (adult leagues started after working hours), so upon reading @jnglmassiv 's post, I checked around to see if there were still CYO leagues and adult recreational cabbageball through the local churches. Probably fewer participants today – especially kids – but the leagues are still going strong in 2026.
And in case anyone else has the same wrong impression I initially did, 16" is the circumference of the ball, not its diameter.
A standard basketball is ~9.5" in diameter.
A 16" diameter ball would need to be real hollow to not be too heavy to throw or hit. How about a baseball-adjacent game played with an inflatable beachball, anyone? Sounds fun.
I was surprised to see the far off places that also play the sport in the wiki. I thought it was mostly Midwest or Great Lakes.
I don’t recognize red hots but the short crew reminds me of softball with outs by ‘pitcher’s hand’ instead of base positions. Also, only allowing hits to left/rt field is easy since the pitches are so slow and predicatable.
I also remember spontaneous games during recess after lunch in junior high. We could do anything, or nothing, but we played softball.