Exploring Popular and Lesser-Known Sports in the UK
As France hosts the Olympic Games this summer, supporters of the UK’s national teams will be cheering them on to success. Today’s Olympic sports are well-known and popular, but in the past some lesser-known sports were part of the games.
It’s fair to say that there are a lot of weird sports out there. This is particularly true in the UK, where as well as being big fans of sports like football, tennis and cricket, some Brits like to spend their free time doing things like snail racing, rowing tin baths around harbours or taking part in underwater hockey!
Introduction to sports culture in the UK
In the UK, sport is a very popular and important part of everyday culture. It plays a crucial role in shaping community and national identities. Many people support local teams. In some sports, England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland compete separately and against each other. The media also takes a major interest in sports, offering extensive coverage via television, radio, print and digital media.
After football and cricket, some of the most popular sports in the UK include rugby, tennis, athletics, snooker, motor racing, boxing, horse racing, golf, darts, swimming and gymnastics.
Lesser-known sports in the UK
While mainstream sports have a big following in the UK, there are lots of lesser-known sports that people love to take part in. Read on to learn about some of these unusual sports.
Underwater Hockey (Octopush)
You may have heard of hockey, which is quite a popular game in the UK. It’s played by teams using hockey sticks to hit a ball across a pitch and, hopefully, into a goal.
Underwater hockey is a bit different. Invented in England 1954, the game was originally called Octopush. Two teams of up to ten people play against each other, with six in each team playing at any one time. Players face each other underwater, meaning they need to be good at holding their breath. The idea is to use a small pusher (shaped like a small hockey stick) to push a puck into the opposing team’s goal.
The big problem with underwater hockey is that it isn’t a very good spectator sport. As few pools have viewing ports, you’d normally need to be underwater to watch! Luckily, major games are filmed so that spectators can watch the match on a large screen.
Cheese Rolling
This sport is thought to be about six hundred years old. Every year, participants gather at the top of a very steep hill in Gloucester for what is now known as the Cooper’s Hill Cheese-Rolling and Wake. Someone then rolls a 3-4 kilogram Double Gloucester cheese down the hill. Participants then start running (and falling) down the hill after the cheese. The first person to get to the finish line at the bottom then wins the cheese.
While Double Gloucester cheese is delicious, it’s safer to buy your own. There are several injuries when cheese rolling each year, and sometimes they’re serious. The winner of the ladies’ race in 2023 was unconscious when she crossed the finish line and only found out about her victory when she woke up in the nearby medical tent!
World Tin Bath Championships
The Isle of Man, a self-governing island between northern England and Ireland, is best known for the Isle of Man TT motorcycle race. However, it is also home to one of the weirdest sporting events we know about – the World Tin Bath Championships. Participants row a tin bath for 400 metres around a harbour at Castletown, at the south of the island. Many of the baths aren’t very seaworthy, so lots of rowers get very wet indeed!
Hundreds of people come and watch the event each year, which was first held in 1972. While it may seem to be an eccentric sport, tin bath racing helps raise thousands of pounds for charity and is often reported on in the national media.
Snail racing
One truly weird British sport is snail racing! Each competitor is a snail with a number or small sticker on its shell. The snails have to ‘race’ to the edge of a dampened, circular track that has a radius of about 13 or 14 inches. A ‘snail master’ starts the race by shouting ‘Ready, steady, SLOW!’
There have been annual Snail Racing World Championships held in the UK since the 1960s. The event was set up by a man called Tom Elwes who had seen a snail race in France. In 1995, a snail called Archie set a record by completing the race in two minutes. Some years the winning snail is much slower. In 2023, the world champion snail, Evie, took over seven minutes to complete the course!
Underwater Rugby
Normal rugby is a game that was developed in England, but the newer sport of underwater rugby was actually created in German diving clubs in the 1960s. Increasingly popular in the UK, underwater rugby is rather different to the sport that’s played on dry land.
Underwater rugby takes place in a pool with two teams of six people (plus six spare or ‘substitute’ players). Like underwater hockey players, participants have to be good at holding their breath. Players have to carry a ball across the pool and put it in a metal bucket, or goal. If you have the ball, you can be stopped or ‘tackled’ by other players. Because a normal ball would float to the surface, an underwater rugby ball is filled with salt water. This makes it slightly less buoyant than the pool water, making it possible to pass the ball and put it in a goal.
Given the British love of swimming, we have to wonder what sports will go underwater next. Something tell us that underwater cricket is unlikely to catch on!
The role of sports in learning English and understanding culture
If you are not a native English speaker, taking an interest in sports in the UK is a practical and enjoyable way to learn the language. Learning sporting jargon, listening to sports commentaries and sharing your interests with other English speakers is great for your speaking and listening skills. Sports are also central to understanding British culture, reflecting many of our traditions and values such as fair play. Experiencing the British passion for sports also gives you the opportunity to develop a sense of belonging and community.
So, if you want to come top of the league for your English skills, why not kick-off by enrolling in our online English courses? With our help, you’ll avoid being on the back foot when talking with native English speakers.
