Sports are awesome! You can have fun, stay fit, make friends and maybe win big – and even better, there’s a whole weird world waiting to be discovered! These are some of the strangest facts about sports! You’ll learn about some unusual competitive events, a few historical facts, and some of the strangest superstitions and craziest world records in sporting history! And if you’re left pumped up and ready for more knowledge at the end, say no more – we’ve got you covered! Here are some fun facts about women’s football, Formula 1, and gymnastics!

1. There used to be girls-only Olympic games

You probably already know that the Olympics began in Ancient Greece, in 776 BC to be precise. You might also know that the Olympics were originally only for men – but did you know that there was a special event for women only? The Heraean Games (named after Zeus’s wife Hera) took place every four years, just like the Olympics. We don’t know loads about the Heraea (which is what the festival was called), but we do know it featured 16 unmarried young women competing in a footrace. It may have been done as a pre-marriage ritual, but the exact purpose is still unknown. Winners received a crown of olive leaves and a portion of cow to be sacrificed to Hera – cool!

2. There are some interesting discontinued Olympic sports

Sports have been added and removed from the Olympics roster for the entire history of the Games – for example, the 2024 Paris Olympics was the first event to feature breakdancing. But some discontinued events definitely aren’t what you’d normally think of when you think about sports! Former Olympic events include firefighting, wheelchair racing, tug of war, hot air ballooning. The most astonishing category is the arts – that’s right, Olympic games used to feature competitions in music, sculpture, painting, writing, and architecture! No word on how interesting they were to watch…

3. A tennis match almost took forever to complete

A typical three-set tennis match takes 90 minutes – but the  longest recorded tennis match WAY surpassed that! The game took place in 2010 at Wimbledon, and was played between John Isner and Nicolas Mahut. The elongated match lasted for an amazing 11 hours and 5 minutes, though it was spread out over three days. It took so long that the electronic scoreboard stopped working when it reached 47–47, because it wasn’t programmed to keep scores higher than that! John Isner eventually won, and you can see a plaque commemorating the game at Wimbledon today!

4. Quidditch is played for real

Sure, you can’t actually fly on a broomstick (as far as we know), but you can still play Quidditch… sort of! Muggle Quidditch (renamed Quadball in 2022) was first played as a real sport in 2005 at Middlebury College in the USA, and it became popular in colleges all over the world! The rules are a little different from Harry’s Quidditch – it’s played on the ground for one thing, and there are no magical flying balls! Instead, the beaters throw dodgeballs, and the snitch is a tennis ball attached to a person who sprints around the field. There are several organisations, and even an International Quadball Association. Yes, really.

5. Golf balls were made of feathers and leather

Golf has existed in its current form since the 15^th century, but the golf ball has changed quite a lot since then! Early gold balls were made of wood or leather filled with cows’ hair, and from about the mid-1500s to the mid-1800s, golf balls were made of leather stuffed with chicken or goose feathers. These balls were called featheries, and one ball was said to contain “a gentleman’s top hat full of feathers” (odd unit of measurement, that).

6. One baseball player was traded for… himself

Sports fans are already familiar with the concept of trading players between teams – but we bet you’ve never heard of a player being swapped for himself! In 1962, the New York Mets (one of the biggest baseball teams in the world) were on the lookout for a new backup catcher, and they selected Major League Baseball player Harry Chiti, who was with the Cleveland Guardians at the time. Players can be traded for a “player to be named later”, which means they haven’t picked the person to be swapped yet, so Harry was brought onto the team with the promise to send a player back to the Guardians later. Unfortunately Harry didn’t perform very well, and he was sent back to the Guardians two months later as the “player to be named later”, making him the first player in history to be traded for himself!

7. Major League baseball umpires have to wear a specific type of underwear

We’re staying in the weird and wonderful world of baseball for this one! Umpires are the people who officiate Major League Baseball games, and they have one particularly strange rule to follow! Umpires have uniform rules, and that includes black underwear! It sounds silly, but there’s a practical (but still sort of silly) reason. The Umpire spends a lot of time bending and squatting, and if his dark uniform trousers split, it could be disastrous! What if it happened on a day the Umpire was wearing his novelty Simpsons pants? No one would be able to continue for laughing! So, if an Umpire’s trousers do split, even in front of a huge crowd there’s a good chance no one will notice!

8. The fastest red card happened quicker than you’d think!

Red cards are given for rule breaking in football, and the fastest red card ever clocked in at 0 seconds into a Premier League match between Sheffield United and Reading in 2007. The card was given to Sheffield United player Keith Gillespie, who elbowed a Reading rival in the face about 12 seconds after he was substituted in, but before the referee had officially restarted the game.

9. Kite flying is a professional sport

You might think that flying a kite is just a bit of fun, but in some places it’s serious business! Kite fighting is a contested sport in several countries, including India, Indonesia, Nepal, Hong Kong, Afghanistan, and Thailand. The aim of the game is to control your kite using the line and cut or drag down rival kites.

10. Wade Boggs loves chicken – a LOT

Athletes are often known for their rituals and eccentricities around sports – but Major League baseball player Wade Boggs might have the strangest of them all! Wade is one of the GOATs of baseball – he was an All-Star 12 times and made 3,010 hits in his career. And he says it’s all because of chicken! He was nicknamed the Chicken Man because he’d reportedly refuse to eat anything but chicken on the day of a game. He started the chicken diet to sell a chicken cookbook, but kept doing it when he got used to the ritual. That wasn’t his only superstition – he also woke up at the same time every day, and went to bed at 7.17pm. He successfully got on base for 85% of his games, so maybe he was onto something?

11. You can go cheese rolling!

Another strange sport has been around for much longer than Quadball – cheese-rolling! In Brockworth near Gloucester, people gather every Spring Bank Holiday to push wheels of Double Gloucester cheese down Cooper’s Hill! The tradition was first recorded in 1826, though it may be about six hundred years old. Competitors roll their wheel down the hill, then chase after it – the first over the finish line wins! The hill is steep and uneven, so it can get pretty dangerous – there are usually several injuries every year. It’s not known exactly how the tradition started, though like a lot of British traditions it probably has Pagan roots. The sport is world-famous and has had winners from the US, Germany, Japan, Australia, and more!

12. A sports venue once helped solve a crime!

Well, to be fair it was a collaboration between a sports venue (Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles) and a TV show (long-running American sitcom Curb Your Enthusiasm). In 2003 a man named Juan Catalan committed a crime in Los Angeles. But Juan had an alibi – when the crime took place, he was at Dodger Stadium watching a baseball game. He didn’t appear clearly in any of the CCTV or the official footage of the game, so it looked like he was going to be convicted. But, amazingly, Curb Your Enthusiasm was there on the same night filming an episode, and Juan appeared in time-stamped footage walking right next to the show’s star, Larry David. What are the odds?!  

13. Golf was played on the moon

In 1971, astronaut Alan Shepard arrived on the moon as part of the Apollo 14 program – and he had a surprise up his sleeve for the people watching the televised spacewalk! Alan produced a golf club and ball, and took a swing. He could only putt with one hand because his gloves were too thick, but he managed to make two hits – the first ball travelling about 22 metres, and the second about 37 metres. This was a surprise for NASA too – reportedly they had no idea he was going to do it!

14. Jesse Owens broke three world records in 45 minutes

Student athlete Jesse Owens was having a difficult few days in May 1935 – he’d just slipped down the stairs at his college and his lower back was badly bruised. But he didn’t let it stop him from competing in the Big Ten Conference, a sports conference and track championships on the 25^th of May. Jesse ran the 100 yard dash, the long jump, the 220 yard sprint, and the 220 yard low hurdles. He broke the world record in the last three, and equalled the previous record in the first! What’s more, he did it all in only 45 minutes! The day was nicknamed his Day of Days.

15. There are more underwater sports than you’d think!

You’ve heard of some underwater sports before – diving, freediving, artistic swimming, regular swimming to name a few. But there are more that you might not have heard of! There are organised games of hockey, rugby, cycling, and orienteering – generally, it’s the same sport but underwater (so, a lot harder). There’s also underwater target shooting, which is done using a speargun. All of these games have rules, championships and governing bodies! But the strangest underwater sport is one you definitely can’t do on dry land – that would be octopus wrestling, which is exactly what it sounds like. It’s a bit of a misnomer, as octopuses typically aren’t aggressive unless provoked, and even then they’d rather swim away than fight you. Divers usually did it by grabbing octopuses from underwater caves, and wrestling until the octopus gave up. There was a World Octopus Wrestling Championship in 1963, but it isn’t popular any more because it’s very cruel to our 8-legged pals.