Sport With Vort: All The Sport You Can Fit in a Sweaty Cup

Written in the bottom of the ninth with bases loaded by Vortman De Ville

My sporting calendar is as full as a candidate for gastric bypass surgery. It’s inevitable that sometimes, some events that I would normally consider compulsory viewing are overshadowed by sporting contests or controversies so enormous that they defy conventional measuring techniques, such as the De Ville Sporting Awesometer. For example, the undomesticated ballet of the Delaware Sprintcar Championships would be eclipsed only by the spectacle of OJ Simpson sacking two opponents and then leading the entire LAPD defensive line on a thrilling chase down an unforgiving, spike-strip laden, roadblock-clogged asphalt field that has more than once seen the end of a promising young athlete armed only with a dream, a stolen hatchback and a recently emptied crack pipe, all played out in front of the relentless swarm of helicopters employed by the good folk of World’s Most Fatal Killer Car Deaths.

With that in mind, it was with great sadness this week that I missed the following events: the 38th Annual Arizona Tractor Pull, the South Shropshire Cow-Tipping Qualifying Final, the North Toowoomba League of Goat Slaughtermen’s Speed Chop-off, the Micronesian Tortoise Regatta, the Canadian Curling League Championship after party, and the Damascus to Durban Camel Sprint 2009. Any real sports fan would look at that list and come to only one conclusion – that if Vortman De Ville missed events of that calibre, he must have sports news as juicy as a 10lb Philly steak, as steamy as the US women’s volleyball team communal shower, as riveting as a 300lb chain-smoking drunkard trying to bowl a 300 game, and as controversial as a room full of unconscious lingerie models, an ex-Superbowl winning quarterback, and an empty bottle of Rohypnol.

PETA FORCES ULTIMATE FIGHTING CHAMPIONSHIP GORILLA BAN

In yet another example of the athletically challenged PC brigade sticking their pale noses in the business of real people, Pussies for the Ethical Treatment of Animals have forced the Ultimate Fighting Championship to clarify their stance on competitive gorilla fighting and ban the primates from competition altogether. The 2010 championship is now in jeopardy after more than 80% of the competitors were deemed ineligible under the new rules. UFC boss Frank “Bare-knuckle” McLoughlin was uncharacteristically emotional in the wake of the changes.

“I feel pretty low,” stammered a visibly shaken McLoughlin. “You know, we bring these fighters in from all over the world, we treat ‘em right, keep them fed and watered, and they love to fight. They love it. And then you get these pansy-assed civil libertarian types tellin’ you there’s somethin’ wrong with two apes in their prime beating each other to a bloody pulp in a cage. I seen the documentaries. Fighting is part of their culture! It’s natural. I’ll tell you what ain’t natural – PETA, that’s what.”

In response to the ape embargo, a PETA spokesperson said “Blah blah blah blah organic seaweed blah blah climate change blah blah blah fossil fuels are bad because they come from dinosaurs and dinosaurs are animals blah blah blah.”


RED BULL EXTREME URBAN GAMES A HIT, TRANSIT POLICE NOT SO SURE

It had to happen. Any adrenaline junkie will tell you that there’s only so many great white sharks you can surf down the Niagara Falls before the thrill wears off and you start looking for something that will actually give you a rush. And so it was that the permanently caffeinated connoisseurs of awesomeness at Red Bull decided that BMX riders jumping through flaming hoops suspended between skyscrapers was a little bit fruity and that they should come up with something halfway exciting – the Red Bull Extreme Urban Games is it.

The ubiquitous beverage manufacturer is fast becoming the leader in the race to legitimise sports previously classed by authorities as “crimes” and “indescribably stupid”. Held in New York City, kicking off this banquet of extremocity was the 2km Sleeper Skiing event, where competitors with water skis clutched a rope attached to the back of a train and hung on for dear life. Reaching speeds of 120km/h, the daring athletes attempt to remain alive while being dragged across the unforgiving and rarely maintained railway sleepers of the New York subway system.

By far the most popular event held was the aptly named Sudden Death Train Surfing, with competitors coming from as far away as Sweden, Finland, and British prison colony Australia. Emerging victorious was Australian Bruce Blokeman, possibly a convict, who saw his fellow competitors “wipe out” on overhead electrical wires, trains travelling in the opposite direction, and other various inanimate but nonetheless deadly objects. Blokeman paid tribute to Swedish opponent Jargmen Höekstrom, who looked to have the win in the bag before being decapitated by a signal light, a la Dennis Hopper in hit Hollywood film Speed.


CRICKET BOSSES CLAIM CRICKET EXCITING, REST OF WORLD SCEPTICAL

Cricket, long held as the most boring spectator sport on earth after baseball, has launched yet another attempt to sex up its flaccid image and reputation as a quasi sport favoured by the tea-swilling English aristocracy. After identifying the highly profitable emerging market of chronic sufferers of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, the International Cricket Board launched the 20/20 League, a form of cricket where each player is given 20 seconds to hit and throw as many balls as possible at the opposing side. However, wary of the notorious fickleness of the ADHD demographic, cricket bosses promised to slash yet more “boring crap” from the competition.

Enter cricket’s newest incarnation – Super Happy Exciting Explosive Cricket OK! SHEECOK is the brainchild of Japanese game show king Noriyami Nomura, the man responsible for such television hits as Poisonous Electric Scorpion Pit Challenge Game, Richard Gere Quote Or Lava Pit!, and the hilarious So You Think You Can Dance With A Siberian Tiger? Nomura has promised to amalgamate the traditional stoicism of cricket with the instantly gratifying thrills of Japanese game show culture.

Players on each team will be kitted out in florescent lycra uniforms with neon headbands, whilst the umpires will be replaced with ill-tempered grizzly bears that have been starved for a month and forced to watch computer simulations of men savagely beating bears with cricket bats. Each player will also have a small explosive charge attached to his groin that will detonate if he remains stationery for longer than ten seconds. Any players surviving beyond ten minutes will be subjected to a pair of converted ex-military helicopter gunships firing cyanide-soaked cricket balls at them.