Saturday 10 August 2019

I Hope I Do Not Offend Participants Or Followers When I Say This,

but I think this must be the most boring sport in the world for both,


photograph Hans van Dijk/Wikimedia Commonsthe Dutch sport of Paalzitten or Pole Sitting, which sees competitors literally sitting on wooden poles for dozens of hours, until they surrender to either numbness or boredom, the sport is not that popular, but a film was made of it, the sport inspired one of the worst films in Dutch cinematography history, called “Sportsman of the Century“, it tells the story of an avid Paalzitten practitioner training to break the fictional record of 250 days sitting on a pole since early childhood, He even fathers a baby while sitting on the pole, and proceeds to lose his love interest after refusing to cancel his participation in a Paalzitten competition to help her, He ultimately dies as an old man, sitting on a pole, obviously, in 2006, the film was nominated for two Golden Onions, in the categories Worst Film and Worst Director, 

the videos are in Dutch, but I am sure you will get the idea, as it happens no one knows exactly how Paalzitten came to be, but some sources claim that it originated in the Dutch province of Friesland, where locals tried to stave boredom by inventing sports that involved objects used in daily life, like wooden poles, it’s not clear exactly why someone thought sitting on a wooden pole just waiting for the other guys to descend first was an antidote to boredom, but somehow the sport of Paalzitten caught on and despite almost going extinct at one point, it’s still occasionally practised in the Netherlands,

Paalzitten poles are usually placed in water, a few meters from each other, so that if the competitors either doze off or get numb enough to fall off, thy don’t get injured, modern poles are usually equipped with a seat and backrest so the competitors don’t get too uncomfortable, and the rules allow for toilet breaks every few hours, it wasn’t always this lax though, in the early 1970’s, participants were not allowed to leave their poles at all. Instead, a huge canvas was hung around them as they relieved themselves in wooden buckets, I have to say this is an ideal sport for the Olympics, where mediocre, no hope of winning a medal sportsmen in their chosen sport, can put on a skirt and win gold in women's events, in Paalzitten, it makes no difference, all contestants are equal!


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