Jousting!

[arnisador]

A Knight's Tale:
Modern Jousting
Sees Renaissance (http://online.wsj.com/public/article/SB121417934152295557-7mqGnr_Son87QmdHZ1LRI9tLjb4_20080723.html?mod=tff_ main_tff_top)




Fred Piraux has been grooming his horse Thorgal three hours a day, polishing replica 15th-century armor and taking lessons in medieval dancing.

Next month, the 38-year-old Belgian police instructor will level his lance at a fearsome opponent, Frenchman Tino Lombardi, in a bid for the top spot with the International Jousting League.
[...]
About 1,000 people world-wide take part in this sport, estimates the International Jousting Association, though only 200 have the equipment and expertise to joust competitively. The International Jousting League, a separate organization, has 47 jousters from San Diego to Paris who compete at castles and fields around the world.


A far cry from the mock re-enactments at Renaissance fairs, competitive jousting is not for the faint of heart or the impecunious.

[geezer]

Man, real jousting. That's something I'd like to see! But it does sound like an expensive...even aristocratic sport. Back in my college days my buddies and I came up with our own version using simpler equipment: two skateboards, a couple of thrash-can lids, two brooms pilfered from the dorm custodian's closet and a keg of beer. You duct-tape a pillow over the end of your broom "lance", chug a cup of beer, grab your trash-can lid "shield", jump on your skateboard "steed" and fly down the dorm hallway into your equally inebriated opponent. Well that was in the 70's. With drinking ages now raised back to 21 and less tolerance for intoxication in general, I doubt we'll see a revival of that style of jousting. More's the pity.

[arnisador]

Back in my college days my buddies and I came up with our own version using simpler equipment

In fact I think we have a still photo:

[arnisador]

Lose this joust, and you're sunk (http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-france-joustsep07,0,7180634.story)

Boat battlers have for hundreds of years broken out the lances in French port city (http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-france-joustsep07,0,7180634.story)



The man-mountain stands silhouetted against the Mediterranean sun, gliding past spectators lining a canal: Aurelien Evangelisti, a.k.a. "The Centurion," a gallic Goliath of Italian and Maltese descent, a baby-faced, hook-nosed Hercules clad head to toe in nautical white, the heavyweight champion of a curious sporting spectacle that has defined this hard-working port town since the 17th Century.

Evangelisti plants a trunk-like leg behind him on the tintaine, a platform atop the stern of a boat propelled by 10 oarsmen. Gaze fixed on his oncoming opponent, wooden lance at the ready, head low, he goes into a statue-like crouch behind his shield, all 365 pounds of him. It's as if Moby-Dick has sprouted arms and legs and gotten hold of a harpoon.

Oboes and drums play a fanfare aboard the boats as they converge, bringing the jousters face to face. The crowd murmurs. Battle!


Lances slam shields with the force of slow trucks colliding. Evangelisti's opponent finds himself lifted off his turret, lance flying, face filling with fear. Then Evangelisti finishes him with a blow from the shield, which is like getting hit by another truck, and the vanquished jouster drops a dozen feet into the water