Imagine tumbling down a 200-yard-long vertical mountain with hundreds of other participants to chase and win a Double Gloucester cheese wheel! Yes, this age-old Hill Cheese Roll race happens annually at Cooper’s Hill, near Brockworth, Gloucester. The bone-shattering perils of this event have never deterred tourists from participating in it though!

Here’s a sport that combines the thrill of danger and the satisfaction of well-pressed laundry! Originally conceived in 1980 but popularised in 1997 by Phil Shaw in Leicester, England, this sport demands participants to iron clothes in the most extreme of scenarios, like ironing while bungee jumping or even ironing underwater in a chilly river!

Brain and brawn clash in the epic sport of chess boxing! The idea was conceived by French comic book artist Enki Bilal in 1992 and adapted by Dutch performance artist Lepe Rubingh as a piece of performance art. The rules are simple–checkmate or knock your opponent out in 11 gruelling rounds of chess and boxing held one after the other in short spans.

Fielijeppen, meaning ‘far leap’ in Frisian, is a sport that was born out of necessity in the 18th century. Farmers at that time developed the inventive method of leaping across waterways and canals using special pole vaults instead of going around them! This action was later adapted as a competitive sport in the whole of the Netherlands by 1771.