The Oddest Contests on Record

by M. Randal Roberts

T the beginning of last year an account was published in one of the sporting papers of a football match on bicycles which took place near Wolverhampton. The attempt to revolutionise our great winter game completely failed owing to its many inherent impossibilities, but it was interesting as showing a tendency of certain orders of mind. There has always been a large number of so-called sportsmen who are never content with recognised forms of sport. They are perpetually on the look-out for some bizarre contest. As a general rule, the more ridiculous the conditions under which such contests take place, the better they are pleased. Anyone who cares to take the trouble to look through the files of Bell’s Life can find ample evidence of this for himself.

“Old Q”—the famous Duke of Queensberry—had an extraordinarily fertile imagination for weird and novel contests. Passing a wheelwright’s shop one day, he noticed one of the workmen trundling a big wheel into the yard. The man was running at a good pace, and it immediately occurred to “Old Q” that here was an opportunity for, in the words of the modern penny weekly, an absolutely novel competition. After some conversation with the wheelwright he learned that a man could probably run faster with a wheel than without one, the wheel no doubt acting as a sort of pacemaker. Having obtained this valuable piece of information, the duke
LAWN TENNIS: MOUNTED v. LIFEGUARDSMAN IN FULL UNIFORM. promptly arranged a match between the wheelwright and a certain fleet-footed barber of Oxford Street, and offered a very substantial prize to the winner. The conditions were that the wheelwright should trundle one of the back wheels of the duke’s carriage, while the barber, of course, should run unencumbered. Just before the match came off the duke made the unpleasant discovery that his nominee could only show his best turn of speed with a wheel a foot higher than that of the duke’s carriage. But “Old Q” wasn’t to be baffled by an obstacle of this kind. He had a sort of platform or daïs a foot high erected along the course where the race was to be run. By trundling the carriage wheel on top of this daïs while he himself ran on the ground beside it, the wheelwright was no longer handicapped, and won the race easily.

The winner, by the way, must have been something of an acrobat as well as a sprinter to have balanced the wheel on a narrow platform while travelling at full speed.

All true golfers must have read with pain an account of the dastardly attempt which was made two years ago to tamper with the sacred game. In a most reprehensible spirit of levity two golfers in July, 1898, arranged a match of which the conditions were that one of them should go round the links with the ordinary ball and clubs, while the other should go round with a bow and arrow. The superior driving powers of the bow and arrow won the day. As a putter the bow proved a contemptibly ineffective implement, but it
GOLF: CLUBS v. BOW AND ARROW. amply compensated for this inferiority by the certainty with which it sent the arrow soaring over bunkers.

As lawn tennis players are not nearly such a serious minded race as golfers, it is only to be expected that lawn tennis should suffer where even golf cannot escape. The writer remembers seeing some ten years ago a weird contest between a most distinguished Irish lawn tennis player and an opponent to whom under ordinary circumstances he could give enormous odds. On this occasion, in lieu of the usual odds he undertook to play him with a soda water bottle instead of a racket. The match proved infinitely more exciting to look at than it appears on paper. The accuracy of the wielder of the soda water bottle was something extraordinary, and in the end he won fairly easily. The experiment was also interesting as showing the impossibility of handicapping a player of the highest class and a fifth rate performer.

But though this match had something torecommend it, the same cannot be said of a ridiculous contest which took place in the early days of lawn tennis at Brighton. In this match one of the players rode a pony which was shod with leather shoes for the occasion, and is said to have appeared to take a personal interest in the affair, while his opponent, a lifeguardsman, was arrayed in the full panoply of the uniform of that corps in heavy marching order. They played the best of five sets, and the mounted player won by three sets to two, his opponent at the end being absolutely exhausted.

A match which excited a considerable amount of interest at the time was played forty years ago between John Roberts, father of the present billiard champion, and an amateur who was a very fair player. Roberts played with an old umbrella instead of a cue, his opponent being equipped in the normal fashion. To appreciate fully the difficulty of Roberts’s task let anyone try the experiment for himself. He will be lucky if he can make the ball travel even approximately in the direction which he intends. Old Roberts, who, by the way, lost the Umbrella v. Cue match, had a great fancy for similar experiments. It is on record that when he met a very inferior player he would abjure the cue altogether and play with his nose.

At first sight the bicycle does not appear to lend itself readily to any abnormal competition. Races, of course, between one-armed and one-legged cyclists are fairly common, but otherwise it is difficult to see how even the most inventive genius could evolve anything really startling in the way of a cycling contest. This, however, is a mere superficial view. At Bradford a couple of years ago an undeniably original match came off between a well-known trick rider and a professional runner. The distance was one mile, and the conditions of the contest were that the cylist should ride backwards, while his opponent should walk.

The race resulted in a hollow win for the cyclist, but in an interview after the race the rider confessed that had the distance been another half mile he must have lost, as the unwonted effort of covering so much ground backwards had tired him far more than a straightforward journey of fifty miles. A competition of this kind is not in the least likely to become generally popular, as the number of cyclists who can even wobble a dozen yards backwards, much less ride a mile, is probably limited to a select dozen or so. Independently, too, of the mere mechanical difficulties of steering and balancing, riding backwards calls into play, for some reason or other, an entirely new set of muscles. It is as well to give warning in case any cycling reader of “Cassell’s,” fired with the account of the Bradford match and eager for a new sensation, should attempt to go and do likewise.

As an inventor of absurd contests the late Sir John Astley was almost as distinguished as the Duke of Queensberry. His great forte was arranging races between animals which Nature had apparently made most unsuitable for the purpose. When quartered at Windsor he instituted the only race that ever took place between chickens. This peculiar contest came about in the following way. While on a visit to a friend
“WHICH COULD BALANCE A CORK THE LONGEST.” near Windsor who kept a hen-run Sir John noticed how rapidly the chickens used to scurry to their mother when food was thrown to her. Here was the germ of an idea for a good sporting match, and at mess a few nights afterwards Sir John Astley expounded to his brother officers his plans for the great chicken race.

He had bought from a farmer a hen and a brood of chickens. Each officer was to choose a chicken and mark it with a ribbon so that he could easily recognise it. The chickens were to be placed about fifty yards away from their mother, and whichever of them reached her first in answer to her cackle when food was thrown to her was to be adjudged the winner. Each officer paid a sovereign for the privilege of entering a chicken for this extraordinary race, and the whole of the entrance money was to go to the officer whose colours the winning chicken carried. The “Hen Derby” came off in the barracks at Windsor, and was witnessed by nearly the whole brigade of Guards who travelled down specially from London.

The race was such a success that it was arranged to repeat it in the following week. It might possibly have become a regular fixture, and a racing stable of chickens been added to the attractions of Windsor, if Sir John Astley’s chicken had not won on each occasion with such consummate ease as to create a suspicion among the other competitors. It was then found that in both races Sir John had selected a sturdy young

THE MARKET PORTERS’ RACE: STILTS v. LOADED.

cock who was much too speedy for his sisters. No competition can continue to exist when victory is always a certainty for the same competitor, and thus it was Sir John Astley’s great chicken race came to an end.

The working classes in Yorkshire and Lancashire are so keen on odd contests of all sorts that the whole of this article could easily be filled with a description of even a few of them, but one or two of these games certainly deserve mention here. At Wakefield quite recently two colliers engaged in the peculiar diversion of trying which could balance a cork the longest on the end of his nose. The prize was an unlimited quantity of fluid, which after the match was shared equally between victor and vanquished. Rigid teetotallers may incline to the opinion that such matches are merely an excuse for alcoholic indulgence, but, as a matter of fact, they are simply ebullitions of the intensely sporting nature of the average Yorkshireman, and the competition would be just as keen if the prize were a bottle of the most harmless lemonade. Indeed, in a contest which came off at Morley last year both competitors were total abstainers. On this occasion a bricklayer was matched to run a distance of half a mile, pushing in front of him a wheel-barrow full of bricks, against a one-legged railway porter. Over a smooth course the bricklayer would probably have won, but the rough ground where the race took place was all against him, and his opponent who hopped with the agility of a kangaroo won by several wheelbarrow lengths.

Talking of one-legged athletes, a very celebrated match was played ninety years ago between two teams composed of one-legged and one-armed cricketers. A picture of this match, which is said to have produced some excellent cricket, now hangs in the pavilion at Lord’s.

Londoners will probably recollect a curious match between two Covent Garden porters in 1890. Covent Garden porters are continually challenging one another to various feats of strength, but on this occasion the competition was something quite out of the common. The course was from Covent Garden Market to Hampstead Heath station and back, the conditions being that one should walk on stilts while the other should carry a sack of potatoes.

The stilt walker was a trifle more speedy, but his opponent possessed the advantage of being hampered in a far less degree by the traffic which runs so thick along the greater part of the route taken. Furthermore the stilt walker was stopped several times by the Police, who displayed a great anxiety about his movements; but, notwithstanding these obstacles, he reached the winning post ten minutes ahead of his opponent. Why two such hard-worked individuals, as most Covent Garden porters are, should voluntarily undertake such a laborious task on the chance of

An image should appear at this position in the text.

CRICKET MATCH BETWEEN ONE-ARMED AND ONE-LEGGED MEN.
(From a picture, by kind permission of the M.C.C.)

winning a paltry sovereign is a mystery utterly unintelligible to the non-athletic mind. It can only be conjectured that the financial acumen of the Covent Garden porter is less strongly developed than his sporting instincts.

It must not be supposed that in queer competitions men have the field all to themselves. Many cases could be quoted to show that women are quite as ingenious in evolving out-of-the-way contests.

Apparently with a view of putting an end to the fiction that women cannot shop as expeditiously as men, a well-known lady novelist undertook lately to drive through Oxford Street and Tottenham Court Road, stop at every milliner’s shop on the route, buy some small articles at each, and return to her house in Bayswater in the space of an hour and a half, the receipt for each article purchased to be produced, not necessarily for filing, but as a guarantee of good faith. She won her wager, but only with a few minutes to spare. To the mere male mind there does not appear anything particularly startling about such a feat, but as among the circle of the lady’s friends her performance was regarded as an epoch-making event, the writer considers it his duty to duly record it in an article dealing with extraordinary contests.

M. Randal Roberts.