Europe: A continent of bizarre sporting endeavour

By Paul Sussman, CNN.com writer

The Wimbledon Tennis Championships, Euro 2000, the Tour de France, The Six Nations Rugby Competition: Europe has always been a continent of great sporting occasions.

All too often, however, the big sports have tended to overshadow the smaller ones. Tennis, football, cycling and rugby are all very well, but there are a host of other smaller competitions which, while receiving less coverage, are every bit as exciting to watch (or in some cases listen to).

Take the World Screaming Championships, which have recently been wowing audiences (and breaking windows) throughout the town of Goldap in northern Poland.

A sort of heavyweight-boxing contest for vocal cords, the championships attracts entrants from as far afield as Japan, Austria, the U.S. and the Czech Republic, all battling it out to see who can emit the loudest scream.

Competition this year was especially fierce, with male-screamer Pawel Dabrowski looking set to carry away the prize after producing a career-best performance of 125.3 decibels.

That, however, was until middle-aged housewife Dagmara Stanek stepped forward and, to the delight of the crowd, unleashed an ear-shattering 126.1 decibel bellow -- equivalent to the sound of a pneumatic hammer -- that snatched the championship from right under Dabrowski's nose.

Europe is replete with such thrilling if little-known sporting events.

From harrijasotzailes in Northern Spain (large men lifting up stones) to caber-tossing in Scotland (large men throwing logs) to wife-carrying in Finland (large men carrying their wives), Europeans leave no stone unturned (log untossed, wife uncarried) in their determination to find new and imaginative ways of competing with each other.

Finland's sporting heritage

Nowhere is this sense of sporting innovation more evident than in Finland, which boasts more sporting competitions than almost any other country in the world.

Here, alongside better known events as football, skating and cross-country skiing, you will encounter such delights as the World Mosquito-Killing Championship -- won last year by Henri Pellonpaa with 21 kills in five minutes -- and, of course, the unmissable Air Guitar World Championships.

If you head north into the Arctic Circle you can take in a bit of reindeer racing, at the same time keeping yourself warm by participating in one of the country's legendary vodka-drinking contests.

The jewel in Finland's sporting crown, however, remains the Sonkajarvi World Wife-Carrying Championships.

Originating in the 19th Century when, apparently, it was common practice for men to steal wives from neighbouring villages, the contest involves husbands carrying their wives over a 253.5-metre (277-yard) obstacle course, cheered on by 7,000 ecstatic spectators.

The winner receives his spouse's weight in beer, and, more importantly, the honour of being Wife Carrying Champion for a year. Such things can mean a lot to a man.

Ugliest shapes

The United Kingdom, too, boasts a wealth of exciting sporting events. Forget Wimbledon and the F.A. Cup - if it is real drama you're looking for check out the Chipping Pig-throwing contest, or the Llanwrtyd World Bog Snorkelling Championships (in which, as the name suggests, competitors snorkel 60 yards through a peat bog, the winner being the one who does it the quickest).

Cumbria's Egremont Crab Fair is home to the World Gurning Championships -- gurning being the art of crumpling your face into the ugliest shape possible -- while the fact that they wear funny hats and ribbons does nothing to dispel the sense of rivalry among the competitors at the annual Walton Hall Morris Dancing Contest.

And let us not forget the now world-famous Cooper's Hill Cheese Rolling Contest where contestants chase a giant 7lb (3.2kg) Double Gloucester cheese down a hill, many of them falling over themselves and ending up in hospital as a consequence.

Elsewhere in Europe you can see -- and take part in -- the Munich Festival Beer Drinking Challenge (Germany), the Odalengo Truffle Hunting Competition (Italy), the Kiruna Snowball-Throwing contest (Sweden) and even the Trie-sur-Baise Pig -Screaming Championship (France).

These gems of sporting excellence may not get as much coverage as, say, the Barcelona Olympics did, but that should in no way detract from the skills they require nor the tension they are capable of generating.

A last-minute World Cup penalty shoot-out might get your adrenalin pumping. In terms of sheer edge-of-the seat excitement, however, there are few things that can compete with a group of grown men fighting to catch-hold of a lard-covered piglet.

Cheese rolling festival takes dangerous turn

World Gurning Championship
Bog snorkelling
Harrijasotzailes

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