10 Weird World Championships You Can Participate in

Every year, world sport championships allow people to showcase their skills and expertise at various sporting events. Only the most talented and competent win the crown. But what about those who have no interest in sport yet wish to participate in some kind of championship anyways? Well, we’ve got them covered too! Below we have compiled a list of ten weird world championships that you can participate in, and perhaps even win, without so much as breaking a sweat.

10. Hide-And-Seek World Championship

Every year an abandoned Italian village nestled in the foothills of the Alps becomes a popular playground for fun-loving adults. The village is called Consonno and it is there that the Hide-And-Seek World Championship takes place.

The Hide-And-Seek World Championship was first held in 2010 in Bergamo, only then it was named far more humbly – ‘’Nascondino (hide and seek) Championship.’’ With time, the name of the championship was updated, as was the location.

The rules of the game are simple. Teams are divided into four groups, with one member from each group hiding while a ‘’neutral searching team’’ counts to sixty seconds. The participants then have ten minutes to jump out of their hiding spot and hit a target in the middle of the playing field, all the while avoiding being found or caught by the searching team.

And while this game does seem vaguely reminiscent of a scene from a horror movie, imagine your pride at being the world champion of hide and seek. It doesn’t get much better than that, does it?

9. The Snuff World Championship

The Snuff World Championship is a bizarre contest held in Germany which involves snuffing smokeless tobacco. The goal is to stuff up to five grams of tobacco into your nostril within a minute. The winner of the championship is the person who not only sniffs the most tobacco but also has the cleanest work station.

The Snuff World Championship is really just like any other athletic event – a big nose does not guarantee success. Rather, intensive training and a sophisticated routine is what will get you your crown.

Best of all, injuries in this ‘’sport’’ are scarce. According to Christian Knauer, Jr., who won the 2011 crown, the nasal mucosa suffers a bit, but the unpleasantness goes only a couple of minutes later.

8. Musical Chairs World Championship

If you loved Musical Chairs as a kid, this is the perfect competition for you. The rules for this ‘’sport’’ are simple – you must be at least 18 years old, you can’t be too aggressive, and you have to keep moving until the music stops and then take a seat within seven seconds. Grabbing a chair with your hands is not permissible -you must plop down onto it or else risk being disqualified.

Referees are on hand to judge close calls and friendly enforcers escort those who argue or ignore a referee’s call. Yes, people do get that competitive.

The championship is broken down into four heats with the survivors of each heat moving on to the next round. Those who finish in the top 10 receive a cushioned folding chair and the overall winner wins both the chair and $10,000.

7. Air Sex World Championship

The ‘’Air Sex World Championship’’ is hosted in NYC by the comedian Chris Trew and involves mimicking sexual acts for a prize. Those who wish to take part in this peculiar championship need only turn up at the venue, preferably dressed in costume. They should also come with a couple of sexy songs at their disposal and the determination to act out the most outrageous sex scenes they can think of.

Only three rules must be followed – there must be no nudity, all orgasms must be stimulated and an imaginary person or object has to be involved in the act.

A panel of judges, involving comedians and sex professionals, judge the first round but the audience chooses the overall winner. The ‘’Air Sex World Championship’’ is a nationwide tour, with the regional winners competing in the final round at the end of the year.

6. World Nose Championship

The ‘’World Nose Championship’’ is just that – a championship for noses. And while everyone can enter, only a few will actually qualify to compete in the finals. The requirements are quite strict and thus only those whose noses are at least four centimetres wide and six centimetres long (five centimetres long for women) will make it to the actual competition. The winner is the person with the largest nose when the length and the width are added together.

Participants who are not entirely happy with their noses resort to dubious enlargement measures, such as snorting snuff tobacco and drinking lots of beer. Apparently they both help expand the nose.
The bizarre championship is hosted by the ‘’Langenbruck Nose Club’’ which was founded by hop-growers in 1961. Nowadays the competition takes place every five years and sees participants flock from all over Europe.

5. World Toe Wrestling Championship

Back in 1974 a group of friends were sitting at the ‘’Ye Olde Royal Oak Inn’’ in Wetton, Staffordshire, lamenting the fact that the UK did not produce world champions at anything. But drinking pints must be good for inspiration for they soon came up with a solution: create a new sport in the UK and ensure that a UK citizen takes the cup.

Bizarre ideas often strike when one is drunk, and this was no exception. The new sport was toe wrestling and was surprisingly quite popular.

For two years, one of the originators retained the championship but in 1976 a Canadian visitor competed and won. This was quite a blow to the originators who had so badly wanted a UK citizen to retain the cup. As a result, the sport was discontinued, but not for long. It was eventually brought back, more popular than ever – people have even asked for it to be included it in the Olympic Games!

4. World Conker Championship

The ‘’World Conker Championship’’ started in 1965 in the Ashton village, Northamptonshire. As with most strange contests, this one was also conceived in a pub after bad weather spoiled the regulars attempt to organise a fishing expedition. The suggestion that they play conkers instead was taken up with drunken enthusiasm and eventually became an annual event.

All entrants receive a conker tied onto lace and have three alternate strikes at the opponent’s conker. The winner is the participant who smashes his opponent’s conker first.

In 1976 the crown went overseas for the very first time after the championship was won by a Mexican participant. In 1998, almost fifty overseas players participated in the contest and today the popularity of the ‘’World Conker Championship’’ has grown so steadily that entrants from countries such as Japan, South Africa and the US participate annually.

3. World Stinging Nettle Eating Championship

The ‘’World Stinging Nettle Eating Championship’’ takes place every year just before the summer solstice in the town of Marshwood, Dorset.

Participants come from all over the world and after paying a small entry fee have exactly one hour to strip from the stalks as many stinging leaves as they can eat. Nettles from home, bathroom breaks and numbing agents are forbidden and only swigs of beer, or sometimes water, are allowed to ease the process. The winner of the championship gets to take home a small trophy and a 100 pounds.

According to a local story the bizarre competition started off as a bet between local farmers. Supposedly, in 1986 a farmer named Alex Williams was boasting about the monstrous, 15-foot-6 inch long nettles growing in his fields. If anyone showed him nettles larger than his, he said, he’d eat his nettles raw.

Unfortunately for Williams, another farmer soon appeared, clutching a 16-foot nettle stalk. Williams was a man of his word, and munched his nettles with pride. Somehow this evolved into an informal tradition and later into a world championship.

2. World Egg Throwing Championship

According to a local legend, in 1322 a new Abbott was appointed to the Parish of Swaton. Unimpressed with the numbers of parishioners who attended the church, he decided to encourage attendance by gifting one egg for each attendee to his sermons.

The parishioners were easy to bribe, seeing as the Abbott was the only one to own chickens in the whole parish. Unfortunately, some time later, the river Eau flooded, cutting off the church from the village. Clearly the parishioners could not go on without their daily egg and thus the monks resorted to throwing the eggs across the river to the waiting locals.

Fast forward seven hundred years later or so, the tradition of throwing eggs has survived and taken the form of a world championship. Each year, contestants from all over the world arrive to Swanton to try their hand at such offbeat challenges as the Russian Egg Roulette (smashing eggs onto your forehead), Egg Static Relay (egg throwing) or Egg Trebuchet (the building of gravity powered machines which are used for hurling eggs at a set distance).

1. World Testicle Cooking Championship

Apparently, dishes made from testicles are a very strong aphrodisiac – they improve libido, awaken primal instincts and give men strength. And nowhere else will you get to taste as many foods made from balls as in the ‘’World Testicle Cooking Championship’’.

People from various countries and cultures take part in this Serbian championship and compete in preparing the best testicle delicacies. So far, the competition has witnessed testicle meals made of eighteen different animals, some of which have included stallion, reindeer, donkey, kangaroo, rabbit, shark and swan.

Apart from the tastiest testicle dish, two more competitions take place during the ‘’World Testicle Cooking Championship’’ – ‘’The Most Powerful Aphrodisiacs’’ and ‘’The Ballsiest Man In The World’’.

‘’The Most Powerful Aphrodisiacs’’ involves specialised teams checking aphrodisiac effects in a separate camp which is used exclusively for that purpose. With a special license, a sense of responsibility and enough courage you have the opportunity to spend the night alone in the camp.

‘’The Ballsiest Man In The World’’ involves choosing the bravest man on the planet. The first winner was Barrack Obama.