SOME OF CRAZIEST The world’s CONTESTS... IN PURSUIT OF FUN wackiest races
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Wife Carrying World Championship, Finland
Love is about carrying your other half through hard times… but you can also carry your wife to victory in this Finnish race.
It takes place on a sandy track and wives must weigh at least 49kg, which can be made up by additional weight, such as a rucksack.
Obviously, it doesn’t take itself too seriously and one rule is “all participants must have fun”. The prize is the wife’s weight in beer.
Retro Running World Championship
To be a runner in this race, you just have to put one foot BEHIND the other.
Retro running simply means running backwards and it may seem unnatural but people run distances ranging from 100m to a half-marathon.
The last event was in Bologna, Italy, in 2018 with one in 2022 postponed due to the pandemic.
The Gloucestershire Cheese Rolling, England
Do you love cheese enough to chase it down a hill? Then this is the race for you.
Every May, a large wheel of cheese is rolled down a steep drop at Cooper’s Hill, near Brockworth, Gloucester. Participants then chase it down the slope, running at first and then tumbling.
Realistically, the cheese is always the winner – but the first human to cross the line behind it gets to keep it.
BY Lydia VELjaNoVSki
BBC hit Race Across the World is back with more pairs competing in an epic race to bag a cash prize that will take them through a string of countries.
The experience is certainly not for the faint-hearted and tests relationships, ingenuity, determination and skill to the extreme.
However, it isn’t the wildest or wackiest race out there. Here, we take a look at some of the oddities to be found across the globe…
lydia.veljanovski@mirror.co.uk
Running of the Nudes, Spain
It could be argued that clothes affect your aerodynamics but that is not why hundreds run naked or semi-naked every year in Pamplona. This annual fixture is organised by PETA activists to protest cruelty to animals in the Running of the Bulls event, which happens two days later. Most participants are in the buff apart from a red scarf and a set of fake horns.
Puffing Billy Running
Festival, Australia
Swapping the racing track for the train track, this is known as The Great Train Race and pitches runners’ speed against a steam train called Puffing Billy, which chugs along at 8.7mph. The two-day festival in Victoria features multiple races, from the 13.5km race against two locomotives to a 21.1km half-marathon, where contestants will spot Puffing Billy if they time it right on their run.