Jousting is of course that state sport of Maryland.* It is an exciting and fascinating game to be sure.
You take a little pony (I guess they are more stable)** and go charging down a runway with your lance. Using the pointy end of the lance, you have to snare a ring suspended from a strap about a meter on the edge of the runway. So the rider leans way out. Cool stuff.
As the game continues the rings get smaller and smaller.
Good stuff.
*You were thinking of lacrosse, weren’t you?
** We will avoid all the obvious puns on ponies being a ‘little horse’ and ‘in the stable.’
The way I’ve seen it, they spear a ring that is hanging from an arch they pass under.
They don’t need to lean out. The smallest rings they spear, IIRC, are smaller than a quarter with a SMALL hole.
I think the winner is the guy who does it the fastest while spearing all of the rings. It’s not very exciting to watch because you can’t even tell if he got the ring or not. You just see a guy running through arches on a horse (I thought I’ve seen it on horses, not just ponies).
Well, enough of this “i think” stuff. Here’s a web page.
It killed King Henri II of France in 1559. A sliver pierced his eye and went into his brain. He took 9 days to die a lingering, horribly painful death. (Didn’t they have opium?)