Seconds out for a bit of Chessboxing
The biathlon can be taken just as seriously as snowshoeing-and-strangling, but it may soon have a rival as the most silly multi-discipline with the arrival of televised Chessboxing and Pool, Poker and Pain
It is a simple fact that all sporting events involving more than two disciplines must be measured against the titles of the underrated 1984 movie Top Secret. Do you recall its opening sequence? Set to a Beach Boys‑esque track called Skeet Surfing, it features a host of young chaps paddling out to sea on surfboards with rifles slung across their soldiers, before catching their waves and taking aim at the clay pigeons being fired off the beach by various bikini-clad lovelies.
All right-thinking people would naturally like to have seen skeet surfing adopted as one of 2012’s Olympic events, and held either at Clacton, or down at Weymouth with the sailing. But given the rules state applications for a new discipline within an established Olympic sport have to be submitted by August, we must accept that the chances of the International Shooting Sport Federation getting their brown envelopes together dwindle by the day.
…As indicated, it aims to imitate the continuing success of chessboxing, which involves opponents alternating between the chessboard and the ring in a series of rounds between which they have just a minute’s break. Lennox Lewis professes himself a fan.
“If the heavyweight championship of the world has always been the ultimate testament to brawn,” inquires one promo voiceover, “and if the World Chess Championship has always been the ultimate testament to brains, then what, exactly, is this?”
Here is the full article.
He’ll knock everyone out.
Interesting spelling mistake that is not in the original Guardian article:
“it features a host of young chaps paddling out to sea on surfboards with rifles slung across their soldiers”
Across their what?
“slung across their soldiers”
It’s a figure of free speech!
Word!