I'm a world champion pea thrower | Hacker News Reader

I'm a world champion pea thrower

theguardian.com

94 pointssandebert30 comments

Loving this story and the UK's passion for creating the most random competition.

You might ask yourself "What if there was a competition about X ?" and then find out that the UK has been doing it for +20 years!

Excellent! There are a few good ones in the US and around the world. Ones that come to mind first are, from the US, the Great Fruitcake Toss [0] (currently in season), and of course Punkin Chunkin [1] which involves fun technology and seems to have a current record of 2900'/883.9m. From Thailand, water buffalo racing [2], and camel racing from the middle east, which is starting to ban child jockeys and replace them with robotic jockeys developed in the UAE and Switzerland.

Seems Humans WILL find a way to have fun at every opportunity. (Goes with the saying I heard from a friend: "If there's two sailboats on the water going in roughly the same direction within a kilometer of each other, at least one of them thinks they're racing.")

[0] https://manitousprings.org/events/fruitcake-toss/

[1] https://www.punkinchunkin.com/the-competition/rules/

[2] https://www.worldnomads.com/stories/discovery/water-buffalo-...

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camel_racing

Speaking of Thailand, I’m a real fan of the Rocket Festival competitions. [1] Competitions satisfy our chimpanzee brains, and so do pyrotechnics!

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rocket_Festival

Bullock cart drag racing was an absolute thrill to watch as a kid in rural Punjab. The speed those guys generate is mind-blowing

I met a consultant in Oman once who, talking about the sports he watches, said “I’m British! I’ll watch anything someone can lose.”

Anything that can be wagered on is of interest to the British.

Let's invent a new one: throw a CPU towards a motherboard. It must land in the socket in the proper orientation. Furthest distance wins.

That's 25% of Taskmaster haha

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cooper%27s_Hill_Cheese-Rolli...

Example: Chasing a cheese wheel down a hill

The World Pea Throwing Championships are held at The Lewes Arms, in Lewes, East Sussex. Their annual Spaniel Racing is also great fun.

https://lewesarms.co.uk/events.html

It's a pity their pantomime animal racing doesn't seem to happen these days. https://m.facebook.com/thelewesarms/photos/a.561480057238414...

They’ve been banned from every salad bar in Sussex.

I kid. Of course there are no salad bars in Sussex.

Some footage of the 2022 competition https://youtu.be/D9AivYbgVuU

Is this finally the time and place to discuss the credibility of Sara Pascoe's 18+ meters, 3 times in a row, perfectly in the middle of the carpet landing pea throws in season 3 of Taskmaster?

What she did was brilliant insanity.

And yet she came in 3rd place, since the other contestants came up with hacks to "technically" propel the pea further.

Full task video: https://youtu.be/u6XVoKI3AnE?si=f3TwSL2L_eFIifTb&t=912

"The uploader has not made this video available in your country"

It’s a miracle it is on YouTube at all, considering it’s a full episode of a broadcast TV show by one of the UK’s biggest networks.

Sadly, they haven’t clipped this task or put it in any compilation I can find, which would be internationally accessible.

>The uploader has not made this video available in your country

Why do we still suffer through this nonsense.

Hers was frozen, which must help a lot.

My first guess would be that flipping it with a finger would be faster than throwing using the whole arm.

Edit: I found a post which kind of gives anecdotal evidence to support it: https://slinging.org/forum/YaBB.pl?num=1343582124

"The Masaii could easily kill lizards with this technique (flipping pebbles with fingers)"

I competed in the World Tin Bath Championships[0] last year, put on by the Castletown Ale Drinkers Society (the CADS).

[0] https://www.facebook.com/WorldTinBathsChampionships

Beside the really exotic competitions, I was thrilled to discover that there are championships of dodgeball and tag.

Absolutely love these random competitions haha

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cooper%27s_Hill_Cheese-Rolling...

Videos are hilarious.

Many of them are on Wikipedia:

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wok_racing

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chess_boxing

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jugger

And of course there is a long history:

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_Olympic_Games#Events

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Highland_games

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arctic_sports

Someone's been watching The Ocho.

Never heard of it, I was just browsing Wikipedia.

So once upon a time, in the area I lived, the local country music station sponsored a cow chip throwing contest. You got to take your pick from a literal pile of dung, and threw from a designated spot, and there were people there with tape measures to measure how far you got.

Well, I was an early teenager. I was in line to throw, and I was bragging about how good my cow chip was - how it had this perfect indent for me to grip it, and so on. And the guy standing next to me in line saw what I meant, and offered to buy it from me.

I literally sold a cow chip for 50 cents.

Looking back on it, I suspect he may have had some alcohol...

So, yeah. It's not just peas that people throw in competitions.

how would you find it? what if the pea falls in a crevasse

Reply on news.ycombinator.com