Knock-out matches of umbrella jousting and the ironing board surfing race are among the disciplines featured at this year’s Chap Olympiad opening in London on 16 July.
Running annually since 2005, the competition welcomes only unfit cads and gentlemen dressed in elegant period dress ranging from Victorian explorers to flappers and World War II RAF pilots.
To win the highly-coveted bronze, silver and gold cravats, contenders will have to struggle with finding witty anecdotes, inducing a line of ‘chapettes’ to swoon over them, and manoeuvring a steed around obstacles wearing a horse mask.
Chap Magazine “a monthly journal celebrating tweeds, hat doffing, martinis and all things gentlemanly,” sponsors the competition. The events will take place in Bedford Square Gardens, located near Russell Square.
“It is a really popular event,” Rosie Broughton, PR Assistant for Essence Communications Agency, said. “Some five hundred people turned up last year. The response has been really positive.”
For the special occasion, Chap Magazine joined forces with Bourne & Hollingsworth Group, the same people behind Prohibition, a night when “illicitly drinking bourbon out of teacups” is set in a decadent ballroom in central London, and The Blitz Party.
But the Chap Olympiad does not stand alone in the list of weird sporty disciplines.
Last Friday, hundreds of aficionados climbed the hills in Gloucestershire for the most bruising competition the human kind has ever come up with – the shin-kicking World Championships.
Rules are simple; fighters have to knock each-other down by kicking competitors in the shins, stuffed up with as much straw as they can shove in their pant legs.
The competition, which was the highlight of the Cotswold “Olimpick” games, dates back to 1612 and requires competitors to wear the traditional white smocks of shepherds.
The Cotswold Olimpicks also featured other louty challenges such as sledgehammer throwing, tug-of-war and a special version of tossing the caber.
Sometimes events of this sort get cancelled due to bad weather conditions, as it happened this year with the world-famous Cheese Rolling competition in Cotswolds, Gloucester.
Yet its fans tend to be hardcore, and for the second year running they did not give up staging the traditional race down a steep hill to catch an eight-pound double Gloucester.
Waiting to run after a gigantic cheese rolling down Primrose Hill in Regent’s Park, London’s gentlemen can at least console themselves with the 2011 edition of the Chap Olympiad.
Tickets for the Chap Olympiad are £15 and sold in advance via Ticketweb or by calling 020 7636 8228. Games will begin at 1pm on Saturday 16 July.
themonels 