Three Swiss Sports That Don’t Require Snow to Practice

Switzerland have blessed us with some fun sports. If you are a Winter Olympics fan like I am, you know about bobsleigh, luge and skeleton. While they are quite interesting sports and somewhat unusual (I mean, going down a track in a sledge, head first at 130 km/h is not something you see every day), the less known traditional Swiss sports are very curious as well.

Hornussen

This sport is often described as a mixture of golf, tennis and baseball. The players are split in 2 teams that take turns in offense and defense. The objective for the team in the offense is to shoot the Nouss (a disc similar to a puck) as far as possible, and for the team in defense is to hit the Nouss with a wood racket before it reaches the ground. Wins the team that is able to intercept more Nousses before they touch the ground.

The first registers known of Hornussen date back from the 16^th century and the first competitive game was held in 1655, more than 100 years before the French Revolution! It used to be a game played by young single farmers by the end summer and beginning of fall on harvest fields. The rumor has it that they used to play Hornussen to show strength and solve disputes between villages (another part of the rumor says that they would end up fighting afterwards anyway). Nowadays, it’s mostly played in the Mittelland (Bern, Solothurn and Aargau) and it became a more democratic sport, as players can play to their own physical capabilities.

If you still can’t picture how the sport looks like, check the video below.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vSdW2AKpWuk

Steinstossen

This is my personal favorite. Not only because of the sport itself, which consists of lifting an 83.5 kg stone, the Unspunnenstein, above your head, run for a few meters and then throw it as far as possible, but also because of the history around the stone.

The original Unspunnenstein was first used in a competition in 1805 during the first Unspunnenfest in Interlaken. At that time, the organizers of the event didn’t consider the stone to be that important and it got lost for 100 years. After 1905, when the stone reappeared, the festival was held with the original stone in irregular intervals.

But, in 1984, a separatist group from the canton of Jura, the Béliers, stole the Unspunnenstein from a museum in Unterseen. The stone was lost again. In 1999 it was confirmed that it was kept somewhere near Brussels and in 2001, after a lot of diplomacy, the stone returned to Switzerland, though not intact. The Béliers had carved 12 stars and their symbol in it. But that wasn’t the end of the stone tragic history. In 2005 it was stolen again! This time from a hotel in Interlaken. Once again by the Béliers. And that was the last known whereabouts of it.

Since 1984 a replica of the 1808 stone is used in competitions and is kept in a safe at the UBS bank in Interlaken.

Schwingen

Last but not least, the wrestling of the alps!

Schwingen bears some similarities with Sumo, the traditional Japanese wrestling. Both sports are really old. Schwingen dating the 13^th century and Sumo the 16^th. Both sports still preserve ancient rituals. Both sports consist of 1 to 1 combat in a circular space delimited by some type of sand.  In both sports you win a match usually by throwing your opponent on the floor, therefore, physic plays an important role, but one can overcome this limitation by mastering technique and the many combinations of grab and throw. But there are also differences. The biggest regards a very sensitive topic in Switzerland: money!

In Japan, Sumo is a multimillion sport. In Switzerland, Schwingen can’t even be considered a professional sport. Schwingen has very strict rules when it comes to money and sponsoring. Advertisement is banned at the wrestling venue and the athletes cannot receive any kind of monetary compensation. If you happen to win a championship, you can choose a very nice prize from a gift table, which might include cow bells, rustic furniture and, the biggest prize, live cattle!

If I had the physique and I wasn’t so afraid of dropping the stone on my own head, I would try Steinstossen. Which one of those sports would you choose to practice? Leave your answer below!