Ellen Wallace
The BBC has a story about a truly odd new, new, new . . . do I say sport? It’s called chess boxing. There is even a world organization for this. The idea is that the competitors play a round of chess, then box for a round, and back to the chessboard.
People involved say they do it to show you can mix brawns and brains. I think they do it because the competition is so limited you surely have a chance to win. In one of the oddest FAQs I’ve read in a long time I see that they state that the world has 150,000 potential chessboxers. In terms of real registrations the numbers are a little hard to add up (this probably disqualifies me) but it looks like there are under 200 people worldwide, including the 20 kids in training at two schools in Germany. This appears to be a feeble effort to develop future players so there are enough chessboxers for future world championships.
You have to be under 35 and have chess and boxing rankings, so I’m out. But I like the idea of combining two unlikely sports so there are not too many competitors. Here’s my suggestion: for the brawn, let’s take wheelbarrow running with bags of garden fertilizer, which anyone who’s done it knows is a very tough and tiring sport. And for the brains, let’s take the razor-edge sharpness you need to sort out Swiss sales tax if you run a business. A round of wheelbarrowing, a round of TVA accounting and back to the wheelbarrow. We can call it wheelbarrow taxing and to qualify you have to carry 1,200 kg of lawn and garden fertilizer and be able to fill in your TVA forms without getting a phone call from the sales tax people because you missed something.
Now there is a sport with few competitors, current or potential.
GenevaLunch, 8 November 2007.
Filed under: Garden
You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.