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Europe has had a hard winter, but the upside may be that the Netherlands gets to hold a rare ice skating race. The Elfstedentocht is conducted in the province of Friesland whenever the 125-mile course of canals and lakes has frozen to a thickness of six inches:
Called the Elfstedentocht (or in English, the Eleven Cities Tour), the race is a roughly 200 kilometer trek across the frozen landscape and takes, at its fastest, over six hours. For the race to occur, the ice must be at least 15 centimeters thick throughout the course — which is rare. While the tradition of skating from city to city dates back to 1760, the race was not formalized until 1909. In the century-plus since, the Elfstedentocht has only taken place 15 times and not since 1997. [...]
If the race occurs in 2012, area officials expect as many as 15,000 skaters — and more than ten million viewers watching on television. Nearly 2 million fans will travel to the region as spectators — an absolutely enormous number given that the total population of the Netherlands is only about 17 million, and doubly so given that the race only occurs at sub-zero temperatures.
Link | News Story | Photo: Flickr user nikontino
Back in the 1980s, the martial art Karate was all the rage among young and old, second only to the unattainable desire to be a Ninja. I took Karate classes, and so did almost every kid I knew, and even if there’d been actual Ninja training classes available I’m sure Karate would have remained every bit as popular, even though Ninja gear does look way cooler.
Everyone wanted to hit each other, break boards with their hands, and be like Ralph Macchio in The Karate Kid. So is it any wonder that this charmingly hilarious video, featuring a rap about Karate and lots of flashy moves, made a big splash back in the day? Enjoy this bit of retro kitsch, featuring some true Karate masters getting down.
–via Obvious Winner
Will Tazer Ball ever win the recognition that it deserves and become an Olympic sport? We don’t know. But even in the absence of that respect, members of the Toronto Terror and other teams will continue to bravely shock each other with underpowered tasers. So far, there are only four teams in the Ultimate Tazer Ball league. But the potential appeal of this sport is obvious.
Link -via The Agitator | Image: Ultimate Tazer Ball
Is that a woman dressed in a burka or ninja gear? Perhaps we shouldn't be suprised to find that thousands of Iranian women are now training to become ninjas.
From Oddity Central:
The Ninjustu school in Iran was started in 1989 by Sensei Akbar Faraji. This was the first time the martial art was introduced to the country. While the club now has over 24,000 members, the number of female participants is slowly on the rise. According to Faraji, in Ninjutsu, men are called ninjas, while women are addressed as kunoichi.
Andy Lewis performed a slacklining routine during the Super Bowl halftime show, and amazed the audience. If slacklining is new to you, you can find out all about this extreme sport (or is it an art?) in an interview with climbing legend Dean Potter at National Geographic News Watch. Oh, yeah, that’s him in the picture, at Yosemite Falls. See a video of Potter’s trip across the abyss at NatGeo. Link -Thanks, Marilyn Terrell!
If your face is freezing out on the slopes this winter, or you’re simply looking for a way to remain anonymous and look like a Viking warrior at the same time, then you need a Beardski. It’s a neoprene ski mask and an epic beard in one, and it comes in all kinds of styles and colors to suit your inner beard.
Amputee athletes are running faster than ever, thanks to hi-tech carbon fiber sports prosthetics. Now Nike has designed a shoe called the Nike Sole for those prosthetic running blades.
Designed to work with the Össur Flex-Run blade, the Sole was a collaborative effort between Nike and triathlete Sarah Reinertsen. Like a normal running shoe, the Sole has an outsole and a midsole, and grips the carbon fiber blade with a material called Aeroply. Nike’s engineers even devised a clever system to secure the Sole to the blade, using an anchor and a rubber strip.
While it’s easy to dismiss this as either a cynical cash-in or an attempt to grab some good publicity, the Sole shows that a level of social acceptance and technological advancement where formerly insurmountable challenges now have consumer-grade solutions. I think we’re getting closer to the future, folks.
See a video of the shoe in action at Geekosystem. Link
The future of waste receptacle technology is here, and it has an LCD screen that can tell you how your stocks are doing today, how long it will take you to get home on public transit, and what the weather looks like for tomorrow.
It’s bombproof, offers a free Wi-Fi connection, and it appears that the only thing that hasn’t improved is how it handles waste.
One hundred of these computerized trash bins are going to be placed in London’s financial district before the 2012 Olympic Games begin in July, so if you’re heading to London this summer you can stop by and say hi, then you’ll have a great story to tell your grandchildren!
Do you watch the Super Bowl for the sports or the commercials? Back in the 1960s, a 30-second ad spot cost about $42,000. Now, it's $3.5 million, a whopping 8,300% increase. And something that costs that much money ought to be good, right?
This one above from 1973 is Noxzema's "Creamed" ad with football star Joe Namath and pre-"Charlie's Angels" Farrah Fawcett.
The Los Angeles Times has the timeline of the Best Super Bowl commercials through the years: Link
So, it's Super Bowl Sunday and you've gotten yourself invited to a football party but you know next to nothing about the sport or the two teams playing. What to do?
Don't worry, BuzzFeed has got your back! Here are some handy talking points if you found yourself amongst fans of either the New York Giants or the New England Patriots:
Read the rest over at Sly's post over at BuzzFeed: Link
Jen Yates has a roundup of cake wrecks celebrating the Super Bowl. Can you decipher the message on these cupcakes?
HINT: It’s starts with the word “gone.”
Both teams are represented equally in the collection at Cake Wrecks. Link
Championship games have champions, and champion t-shirts. But since we don’t know who that is until the championship game is over, championship shirts are printed for both teams, so they can be presented to the winning team immediately. It looks good on TV, you know. But what happens to the other shirts -the ones with the losing team’s name on them? They used to be incinerated, but that has changed over the years. Read all about it at mental_floss. Link
(Image credit: Reuters/Oswaldo Rivas/Landov)
The boxing world might have a furry new lightweight champ on its hands, in the form of this adorable boxing cat! It appears that he’s learned how to stick and move by watching fights on TV, and if this video is any indication of how he’ll perform in the ring this kitteh’s got some fierce moves!
–via Geekosystem
This Super Bowl commercial from Budweiser Canada features two recreational league hockey teams in Port Credit, Ontario. No, it’s not an original idea, but it is done well in this instance. The ad will not be broadcast in the U.S. so we have to show it to you here. -via Buzzfeed
Methodist Hospital in Houston has some advice for football fans who are looking forward to the Super Bowl this Sunday: don’t forget to pee.
“During most sporting events people will get up and use the restroom during the commercials and not have any problem,” said Dr. Jeff Kalina, associate medical director of emergency medicine at Methodist. “However, most of the time the commercials are the best part of the Super Bowl, so we have seen people who have to come in and have a catheter put in to relieve themselves.”
Super Bowl TV ads: Annoying and dangerous.
Methodist says “people who drink too much and fail to get up and go to the bathroom can also develop a problem called urinary retention, a condition where the bladder gets so full that the muscles are not strong enough to generate a stream.”
Link -via The Big Game
Whether you’re watching lacrosse, hockey, or golf, body checking always makes a sport more interesting. Here’s a Norwegian exhibition of soccer than incorporates this insight.
-via @JessFink
Are you a die-hard football fan? Are you a real Super Bowl fanatic? Then you should be able to name all the quarterbacks who won the Super Bowl in its 45-year history. In eight minutes. I named four of them, although one was a gimme. Anyone can do better! Link
Legolas is alive, and he’s a Russian woman named Iza Privezenceva. Watch her send arrows downrange about once a second and, as you can see at the end of the video, hitting her target most of the time.
YouTuber keef70 decided to use 3d and visual effects software to spice up his surf videos, and in my opinion he did a great job! Here’s what led to making this ambitious short:
I wanted to learn more about digital filming, formats, and editing and since I surfed, the GoPro seemed like a natural place to start. I figured after filming and editing a few vids I could move up to something like a Canon 7d, 5d, or the Nikon equivalent.
I got the idea for this after looking through all my footage and I’ve always been curious how effects artists match CG with filmed footage…
So I decided to figure out what software I needed and do it. That’s why it took me a year to do, because I was learning the software as I was doing it.
I could see this becoming a new trend in extreme sports videos, because nothing says extreme like explosions in the sky!
–via Geeks Are Sexy
What?
Did you have to run track for PE? You poor thing!
15-year-old Sian Spence nominated indoor skydiving as her GCSE PE exam, and got it approved:
Her father, who works at the Computer Science Department at the University of Wales as a systems supporter. added: "Sian approached the school about doing it.
"This will be the first time anywhere in the UK that indoor skydiving will be assessed as part of a GCSE PE exam.
"We have suggested doing ten one-minute flights, all being assessed for levels of competence, and there will various aspects including testing a range of individual competencies, assessment of ability to deal with a changing environment, ability to deal with other fliers and an element of competition.
This is a sport that has no place for the sheepish among you. You’ve got to be tough, fast, and precise with the clippers. That’s why shearing is a competitive event in New Zealand, and some people there want the Olympic Games to host it as a demonstration sport:
Maxwell said men’s and women’s world record-holders, Ivan Scott of Ireland and Kerri-Jo Te Huia of New Zealand, showed the athleticism necessary to reach the top of world shearing.
“Ivan regained his world eight-hour solo lamb title by shearing 749 lambs, seven more than the previous world record,” she said.
“Kerri-Jo smashed the women’s eight-hour solo lamb shearing world record by shearing 507 lambs, 37 more than the previous record.”
To be accepted on the Olympic program, a sport first must be recognized by the International Olympic Committee by being widely practiced around the world and administered by an international federation that ensures that the sport’s activities follow the Olympic Charter.
Link -via MetaFilter | Photo: Flickr user NatalieMaynor
The newest members of the Baseball Hall of Fame are to be announced today. I found out that no player has ever been inducted with 100% of the votes tallied. But there have been 27 players who got 90% or more of the votes cast. How many of those players can you name? I could only name ten, and that was with a list of Hall-of-Famers and my husband’s help! Maybe you can beat the current average of 39%. Link
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This is the most fascinating video that you will see all day, and possibly all week. Two champion cyclists try to be the fastest at this thousand-meter race by moving the slowest. In fact, the two competitors go so slowly that at the 3:38 mark, both come to a complete halt. Why? Dan Lewis explains:
The tactical advantage should be clear — the racer in the rear can make a sudden move when the front racer isn’t looking, catching the front racer flatfooted and therefore unable to catch up. But this advantage is moot if a cyclist believes he can simply outrace his opponent over the 1,000 meter course. That’s where aerodynamics come in. Vehicles in motion create slipstreams behind them — basically, rifts in the air similar to what a ship creates in the water. Other vehicles close behind them travel within this slipstream and get a benefit from it: they “draft” and experience less drag, and therefore need to expend less energy in order to go the same speed.
In the case of match sprints, this gives the trailing cyclist an enormous advantage. If the lead racer pushes it from the start, he will end up with only a slight lead with 200 or so meters to go — but his opponent will have much fresher legs. So in order to combat this, we get this weird do-si-do — on bicycles.
National Geographic selected ten amazing people for their Adventurers of the Year. You can read about each one and then vote for your favorite to win the People’s Choice Award (through January 18th). One of those finalists is rider Danny MacAskill, whose stunt videos have gone viral over the past couple of years. Read more about him at NatGeo’s Intelligent Travel blog. Link -Thanks, Marilyn Terrell!
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Norway’s hockey team appears to have a secret weapon in the form of an invisible player! But no, that’s Ole Kristian Tellefsen, getting into a tussle with Finland’s Petteri Nokelainen last May. This strange picture is part of Sports Illustrated’s gallery of Pictures of the Year. Link -via reddit
(Image credit: Imago/ZUMAPRESS.com)
The Cup of African Nations for Amputee Football (CANAF) concluded last month in Ghana, and Liberia won the tournament by defeating Ghana in the final game 4-2. Link -via Buzzfeed
Comments Off Most people born without arms would never dream of taking up archery, much less training to compete in the Paralympics, but then most people don’t have the drive that Matt Stutzman has in abundance.
Matt has never let his physical impairment stop him from doing anything he’s wanted to do, including playing guitar and learning to eat with his feet. He is an inspiration to us all, and should serve as a reminder that we can do anything we put our minds to, regardless of physical limitations.
Join me in wishing Matt luck as he gets ready for the 2012 Paralympic Games in London!
–via Super Punch
Comments Off Brenda Hewlet had zero experience with hockey, and even had trouble walking out on the ice. But she still made a shot that would challenge master players. From 114 feet, she drove the puck into a hole that appeared to be about a inch wider than the puck itself. For this amazing performance, Ms. Hewlet won a new truck from a local Ford dealership.
-via Jalopnik
Although it has a long way to go from viral video to officially sanctioned Olympic sport, groin ball shows some promise. It’s played by four people in two teams. One grapples with an opponent while the two remaining players try to strike their opponents in the groin with tennis balls. When one player collapses to the ground in agony, his/her team has lost.
For those of you not athletically inclined, there are fantasy leagues.
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Gerard Baker, a native of the UK, grew up playing and watching two different sports called football, or what Americans refer to as soccer and rugby. But since that time, his passion for the sports of his homeland has petered out in favor of the American game. Why? Baker explains:
It’s none of the usual explanations: lots of scoring being better than endless nil-nil draws—I’ve been to cricket matches in which 1,000 runs were scored and you could hardly call them riveting. It’s not the hoopla or the sport-as-family-entertainment thing either which soccer fans accustomed to English hooliganism are supposed to appreciate. (Have you ever been to an Eagles game?)
Baseball fans will have to forgive me here, but the answer, I think, is that football is the quintessential American sport. It’s no accident it hasn’t really caught on elsewhere (the annual NFL game in London notwithstanding) whereas baseball and basketball have at least a claim to a global following and participation.
In its energy and complexity, football captures the spirit of America better than any other cultural creation on this continent, and I don’t mean because it features long breaks in which advertisers get to sell beer and treatments for erectile dysfunction. It sits at the intersection of pioneering aggression and impossibly complex strategic planning. It is a collision of Hobbes and Locke; violent, primal force tempered by the most complex set of rules, regulations, procedures and systems ever conceived in an athletic framework.
Soccer is called the beautiful game. But football is chess, played with real pieces that try to knock each other’s brains out. It doesn’t get any more beautiful than that.
Link -via Ace of Spades HQ | Photo: AP
