With the 7th annual Rock Paper Scissors World Championship playing out Oct. 25 in Toronto, TIME takes a look at some of the strangest championships in the wide world of sports
Oct. 25 marked the 7th annual Rock Paper Scissors World Championship in Toronto. Hundreds of “RPS” enthusiasts signed up to participate in the tournament, which featured round after round of repetitive hand gestures and a $10,000 grand prize for the person who could cover the most rocks with paper, smash the most scissors with rock, and cut the most paper with scissors. The game has some strategy — knowing when to open your hand, avoiding a predictable pattern of gestures — but for the most part, it is based on luck. Kind of like the lottery, but with less money and better odds. In honor of such a quixotic tournament, TIME takes a look at some of the strangest world championship games out there.
Wales is a strange place. Not only are there supposedly four times as many sheep as people in the country, but it is also home to the World Bog Snorkeling Championship, which takes place in 60-yard trench cut through a private peat bog on the outskirts of a town called Llanwrtyd Wells. With barely 600 residents, Llanwrtyd Wells claims to be the smallest town in Britain, and it hosts crazy festivals to draw tourists.
World Bog Snorkeling Championship competitors swim two lengths of the bog— which is very cold and smells terrible — with flippers and a snorkel. No recognized swimming stroke may be used; snorkelers must doggy-paddle or swim with their arms held directly in front of them. Most competitors wear silly costumes and are careful not to swim with any exposed cuts or scrapes (it is, after all, a bog). The world record is currently one minute 35 seconds. Once an extremely obscure local sport, the event now attracts hundreds of competitors and spectators from all over the world and is thus now only slightly obscure. 2008 marked the 23rd annual World Bog Championship; 170 snorkelers took part, and 23-year-old Conor Murphy from Ireland took home the $100 prize.
The two teams from Tinseltown were each manhandled by teams from some of the league’s smallest media markets – the Lakers by the San Antonio Spurs, and the Clippers by the Oklahoma City Thunder.
