Traditional Swiss sports are somewhat down to earth. It’s nothing like chocolate-eating competitions or cheese-rubbing time-trials. Traditional Swiss sports are wrestling (Schwingen), rock-throwing (Unspunnen-Stone, 83 kg) or maybe Hurnussen (hornetting).
The latter is rather a flatland-sport, where as Swiss wrestling and rock-throwing come from the mountain areas. There are several happenings throughout the year with these sports, but the federal alpine-festival (eidgenössisches Schwing- und Älplerfest) only takes place every three years. This year it was in Aarau.
Swiss wrestling has got nothing to do with the dumb and perverted show-off fights of American wrestling. As already pointed out it’s very down to earth, and it’s not professional.
Here are some basic rules of Swiss wrestling:
- There are two types of wrestlers: ‘Sennen-Schwinger’ (shepherd-wrestler) and ‘Turner-Schwinger’ (gymnast-wrestler). The Sennen-Schwinger is one who only does wrestling and no other sports. The Turner-Schwinger is one that is in a gymnast-club and wrestling is only one sport he does. Turner-Schwinger have to be dressed in white, Sennen-Schwinger have to wear dark trousers and preferably a blue shephard’s-shirt without collar. Both types have to wear wrestling-pants with handles.
- During the fight, both wrestlers have to hold the opponents pants with at least one hand, otherwise the fight is being stopped.
- The wrestling-field is round and covered with saw-dust. Both wrestlers wipe the dust off the other ones back after the fight.
- Wrestling is a non-professional sport. No prize-money is given. At normal events the first prize is a cow-bell, at national events the winner gets a wreath.
- The winner of an event will further on be referred to as ‘bad guy’ (ein Böser) or ‘evil wrestler’ (böser Schwinger).
- The winner of the annual national Schwingfest and the even more important federal Schwingfest (every three years) is called King.
- The athletes are named the ancient Swiss way: Family name first. So this year’s King isn’t Jörg Abderhalden, it’s Aberhalden Jörg.
If you think, throwing a guy on his back with nothing but grabbing his pants, you better think again: Most athletes are at least 1.9m tall and 100kg heavy (6-footers at 220 lbs)! An athletic sports-commentator of our national radio station got flipped over in less than a second in a fun-fight on Friday!
The rules for rock-throwing are even simpler: just throw it as far as possible. The rock is so big and heavy that hardly any athlete can really throw it…
The festival attracted 200’000 people. If you have been to Aarau before, you might be able to imagine what the city looked like over the weekend: The whole city was a huge camping yard, and every green spot large enough to put on a tent was occupied. But still the festival was very peaceful. Unfortunately one athlete died because of the heat and dehydration.
Hope you enjoy the videos.
Thanks to Swissinfo.org that they put some videos on youtube!
3 Kommentare:
Now that was a great post! I absolutely loved/needed the visuals to totally get the point..
Now I'm not totally sure if I caught it, but did you go to watch?
Thanks for sharing!
And yes that photo was taken before I went to Prague in 2002. I'm guessing it was either Feb or March while it was almost sleeting rain that day and very cold. I miss that type of riding so much. It's a homesickness for sure!
I was at the festival, but not in the arena.
This was very interesting - to watch old, traditional sports like these, tells a lot of culture, and with 200.000 spectaters, it's sure has long roots.
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