Day -9: The World Games
They do everything the Olympics doesn't.
This newsletter is ostensibly about the Olympics, not “things that aren’t the Olympics,” but the Olympics are such a big deal that a lot of whimsical competitions have been created in its image.
My personal favorite of these is the World Games, which essentially exist in the negative space created by the Olympics’ giant silhouette. The World Games are an international athletic event occurring every four years and exclusively featuring sports that are 🚫NOT🚫 in the Olympics. They are a haven for water skiers, snookerers, orienteers, and parachuters. While those athletes wait for the Olympics to give their sport the golden ticket—or, in the case of tug of war, mourn their olden days of Olympic glory—the World Games are here for them in less-than-Parisian host cities like Birmingham, Alabama (2022); Kaohsiung, Taiwan (2009); and Lahti, Finland (1997).
What happens when one of these sports gets added to the Olympic program? They cut ties with the World Games and ascend to a higher-profile dimension, much like a Jellicle cat to the Heaviside Layer. Since the inaugural World Games in 1981, they’ve lost badminton, beach volleyball, rugby sevens, triathlon, and women’s weightlifting to the Olympics. As someone who is literally not involved in any of this, I find it a bit bittersweet. One might imagine a tragic romance involving two athletes from far-flung nations—let’s say a triathlete from Uruguay and a bowler from Uzbekistan—who see each for two magical weeks at the World Games every four years, but then triathlon gets promoted to the Olympics, so they no longer have a chance to see each other at international sports competitions regularly!! Presumably, this has happened.
Anyway, I have to tell you about some of the niche sports they have at the World Games, because it’s very important.
Finswimming
This is like regular pool swimming…except while having special restrictions on how you’re allowed to breathe and also WEARING FINS??
The World Games has two kinds of finswimming:
In apnea finswimming, you swim 50 meters holding your breath the whole time, with a risk of disqualification if your head comes above water.
Surface finswimming can be for 100 to 400 meters, involves wearing a snorkel, and requires you to stay on the surface of the pool the whole time unless you’re making a turn.
Importantly, both of these variants are done wearing a monofin, which has both of your feet together mermaid-style, rather than the single-foot bi-fins you might be picturing. Michael Phelps who???
Artistic Roller Skating
This is very similar to figure skating…except it’s on roller skates! Unfortunately for me, it seems to be out of the mix for the 2025 World Games, which will only have arguably-less-dorky roller sports like speed skating and inline hockey.
Similarly unfortunate is that there doesn’t seem to be any great video on YouTube from this discipline at past World Gameses, but I still encourage you to watch the above group performance from the 2022 World Skate Games, which features a bunch of gals artistically showing you how the human brain works.
Orienteering
Orienteering is something people actually compete in! Orienteering is something people actually compete in!!!! Participants are given detailed topographic maps and set loose somewhere in the host city, where they have to quickly navigate to a series of control points (basically just orange signs you have to tap) and eventually to the finish line.
At the World Games, they have both individual orienteering events as well as mixed-sex relays. The video above is from the 2022 relay, which sees the competitors running around in large groups through empty downtown Birmingham, which I personally think is an amazing sight to behold.
Lifesaving
Lifesaving is also something people actually compete in!!! Disciplines include: manikin carry, where you have to swim out and rescue a sunken mannequin and then bring it back to safety, and line throw, in which you throw a line into a pool and then a teammate has to use the line to get out (?).
The lifesaving competition videos I could find on YouTube aren’t very compelling (there’s just so much splashing that it’s hard to see what’s going on) but I guess feel free to look at the one above, which admittedly isn’t from the World Games.
Airsports
Airsports is a category that includes a lot of different things, most of which I don’t know anything about, but I am here to try.
In the 2000s, they had four-way formation skydiving, where you have a little quartet of skydivers all connected to each other trying to accurately position their bodies into various configurations. Click through for an example video! Look at them go!
In 2017, there was something called paramotor slalom, which is when you’re in a motorized paraglider (that’s apparently what a paramotor is) and you have to navigate your way through gigantic cones floating on the water. To see what this looks like, lay eyes on the video at the beginning of this section (sadly not from the World Games—their YouTube presence isn’t great). It really makes this sport look like it should feel exquisitely serene, but presumably it would kill someone like me on the spot.
In recent years, the World Games has frequently had canoply piloting, which is like, you parachute from high up in the sky to juuuuust above a body of water, and then you basically skim the water with your body as you move between some gates to the shore. Then you get scored on how fast you go, how far you can go from the first gate without ending up on the ground, and to what extent you can keep your body exactly where it’s supposed to be between the gates. See it in a video!
Apparently in 2022 they added drone racing into the mix. I don’t feel like you really need to see a video of this one.
BONUS: Mascot Highlights and Lowlights
The World Games has mascots, and as with the Olympics, they are a really mixed bag! In the interest of brevity, I’ll just stick to my top two and bottom two World Games mascots:
The Worst: August (1997) and Vulcan & Vesta (2022)
The mascot from the 1997 World Games in Lahti, Finland is named August, after the month the Games happened in, and is supposed to be some kind of clown fox (???). Apparently their head shape is supposed to be an homage to hats from Lapland. But why…do they look like this? Is their shirt supposed to depict a basketball, a sport which is not featured in the World Games, or is it equipment from some more obscure ball sport?
Meanwhile, apparently Vulcan has long been a symbol of 2022 host city Birmingham, because they have a giant statue of Vulcan and he maybe has to do with the metal production industry in the city(?). Vesta, like Vulcan, is part of the Roman pantheon, and is also the namesake of Birmingham suburb Vestavia Hills. These mascots look horrible, sorry!
The Best: Huggy & Nummy (2001) and Allwin (2005)
Huggy and Nummy—mascots of the 2001 World Games in Akita, Japan—are impish little egg creatures. We know very little about them, but they are so charming!
And then Allwin—mascot for the 2005 Games in Duisburg, Germany, wherever that is—is just sublime. Per the World Games website, “It is very difficult to find any likeness in the Duisburg mascot to a living creature, though it had arms and legs and could walk.” Instinctually my brain processes him as a cow, but that’s probably not correct, right? His name is supposed to be like the German boys’ name “Alwin” but also the English words “all” and “win.” Großartig!
Artistic Rollerskating: The Skimbleshanks of the World Games!
Duisburg has probably the worst train station I’ve ever been to in Europe and it’s kind of middle of nowhere?