[HN Gopher] I'm a world champion pea thrower
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       I'm a world champion pea thrower
        
       Author : sandebert
       Score  : 62 points
       Date   : 2023-12-29 12:03 UTC (10 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.theguardian.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.theguardian.com)
        
       | aronhegedus wrote:
       | Absolutely love these random competitions haha
        
         | graphe wrote:
         | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cooper%27s_Hill_Cheese-Rolling...
         | 
         | Videos are hilarious.
        
         | thih9 wrote:
         | Many of them are on Wikipedia:
         | 
         | - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wok_racing
         | 
         | - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chess_boxing
         | 
         | - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jugger
         | 
         | And of course there is a long history:
         | 
         | - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_Olympic_Games#Events
         | 
         | - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Highland_games
         | 
         | - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arctic_sports
        
           | dehrmann wrote:
           | Someone's been watching The Ocho.
        
         | AnimalMuppet wrote:
         | So once upon a time, in the area I lived, the local country
         | music station sponsored a cow chip throwing contest. You got to
         | take your pick from a literal pile of dung, and threw from a
         | designated spot, and there were people there with tape measures
         | to measure how far you got.
         | 
         | Well, I was an early teenager. I was in line to throw, and I
         | was bragging about how good my cow chip was - how it had this
         | perfect indent for me to grip it, and so on. And the guy
         | standing next to me in line saw what I meant, and offered to
         | buy it from me.
         | 
         | I literally sold a cow chip for 50 cents.
         | 
         | Looking back on it, I suspect he may have had some alcohol...
         | 
         | So, yeah. It's not just peas that people throw in competitions.
        
       | burrish wrote:
       | Loving this story and the UK's passion for creating the most
       | random competition.
       | 
       | You might ask yourself "What if there was a competition about X
       | ?" and then find out that the UK has been doing it for +20 years!
        
         | toss1 wrote:
         | Excellent! There are a few good ones in the US and around the
         | world. Ones that come to mind first are, from the US, the Great
         | Fruitcake Toss [0] (currently in season), and of course Punkin
         | Chunkin [1] which involves fun technology and seems to have a
         | current record of 2900'/883.9m. From Thailand, water buffalo
         | racing [2], and camel racing from the middle east, which is
         | starting to ban child jockeys and replace them with robotic
         | jockeys developed in the UAE and Switzerland.
         | 
         | Seems Humans _WILL_ find a way to have fun at every
         | opportunity. (Goes with the saying I heard from a friend:  "If
         | there's two sailboats on the water going in roughly the same
         | direction within a kilometer of each other, at least one of
         | them thinks they're racing.")
         | 
         | [0] https://manitousprings.org/events/fruitcake-toss/
         | 
         | [1] https://www.punkinchunkin.com/the-competition/rules/
         | 
         | [2] https://www.worldnomads.com/stories/discovery/water-
         | buffalo-...
         | 
         | [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camel_racing
        
           | nxobject wrote:
           | Speaking of Thailand, I'm a real fan of the Rocket Festival
           | competitions. [1] Competitions satisfy our chimpanzee brains,
           | and so do pyrotechnics!
           | 
           | [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rocket_Festival
        
         | ycombinete wrote:
         | I met a consultant in Oman once who, talking about the sports
         | he watches, said "I'm British! I'll watch anything someone can
         | lose."
        
         | codebrrr wrote:
         | Let's invent a new one: throw a CPU towards a motherboard. It
         | must land in the socket in the proper orientation. Furthest
         | distance wins.
        
         | oh_sigh wrote:
         | https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cooper%27s_Hill_Cheese-Rolli...
         | 
         | Example: Chasing a cheese wheel down a hill
        
       | elpocko wrote:
       | Is this finally the time and place to discuss the credibility of
       | Sara Pascoe's 18+ meters, 3 times in a row, perfectly in the
       | middle of the carpet landing pea throws in season 3 of
       | Taskmaster?
        
         | laluneodyssee wrote:
         | What she did was brilliant insanity.
        
           | unsupp0rted wrote:
           | And yet she came in 3rd place, since the other contestants
           | came up with hacks to "technically" propel the pea further.
        
         | pimlottc wrote:
         | Full task video:
         | https://youtu.be/u6XVoKI3AnE?si=f3TwSL2L_eFIifTb&t=912
        
           | AussieWog93 wrote:
           | "The uploader has not made this video available in your
           | country"
        
         | aqme28 wrote:
         | Hers was frozen, which must help a lot.
        
       | praptak wrote:
       | My first guess would be that flipping it with a finger would be
       | faster than throwing using the whole arm.
       | 
       | Edit: I found a post which kind of gives anecdotal evidence to
       | support it: https://slinging.org/forum/YaBB.pl?num=1343582124
       | 
       | "The Masaii could easily kill lizards with this technique
       | (flipping pebbles with fingers)"
        
       | foreigner wrote:
       | I competed in the World Tin Bath Championships[0] last year, put
       | on by the Castletown Ale Drinkers Society (the CADS).
       | 
       | [0] https://www.facebook.com/WorldTinBathsChampionships
        
       | tim333 wrote:
       | Some footage of the 2022 competition https://youtu.be/D9AivYbgVuU
        
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       (page generated 2023-12-29 23:00 UTC)