I honestly doubt that you need to be as muscular as the World Yo-Yo Championship Logo would suggest to really compete at Yo-Yo, but I guess the roids can't hurt.

via worldyoyocontest.com

Watch the show live online! I'm hoping for some kinda ridiculous action.

Balls And Blood

Without even hearing any arguments, I'm prepared to make this the Official Sport of Uncommon Sportsman. Gentlemen, the setting:

It's a blistering summer day in Piazza Santa Croce, an ancient square in Florence, Italy, fringed by a 14th-century church and a towering marble statue of Dante Alighieri. Usually a gathering place for churchgoers and reverential tourists, today the piazza is a setting for battle. Two teams of muscular, tattooed, bare-chested men are engaged in hand-to-hand combat over a ball, though with all the bodies flying, it's often impossible to say where it is.

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Who knew that gender testing was such an important consideration in sports?

"Suspected athletes will be evaluated from their external appearances by experts and undergo blood tests to examine their sex hormones, genes and chromosomes for sex determination," says Professor Tian Qinjie.

In other words, the visible presence of a penis and/or one or more testicles is not good enough for China's Olympic Comitte. I always thought that the "visible penis and/or one or more testicles" test was a fairly accurate one, but apparently this has been a problem for a while.

The International Olympic Committee (IOC) introduced sex testing in 1968 at the Olympic games in Mexico City, after the masculine appearance of some competitors, many pumped up by anabolic steroids, had started to raise questions about the gender of athletes in female events.

Friggin' 60's ruining it for the rest of us.

EXPN previews the first Women's Moto X Race by highlighting some fan favorite riders. Far be it from an Uncommon Sportsman to criticize focusing on cute chicks performing in uncommon sports, but let's play a game. I'm going to throw adjectives out there and the photos that EXPN used to preview the ladies. Try to match up the adjective with the rider.

crusty. well rounded.	via expn.go.com
sprightly sparkplug	via expn.go.com
effervescent	via expn.go.com
blonde, beautiful and fast. looks more like a ballerina than a professional motocross racer	via expn.go.com

It all started with an unknown woman being taped by her boyfriend while she hula hooped in her underwears, using the Wii Fit.

Then Playboy Cyber Girl of the Year 2008 Jo Garcia got in on the action.

Now working out on the Wii Fit has become her thing and she's shot two more videos.  One doing the ski jump and one doing yoga.

It turns out that Wii Fit really can accelerate your heart beat.  We salute you Jo Garcia you are a true Uncommon Sportswoman.

The first video is her doing the ski jump, timing is everything.

This next video is Jo doing yoga, it's fantastic.

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2008 USAJRF DDPS Grand National Champions (via drmeier54)

Look how ridiculous fast these kids move. Their legs are just like pistons. I was watching this on Fox today just after their coverage of the Red Bull Air Race and it struck me how much more of an athlete you have to be to do something like speed doubledutch versus flying a plane super fast and through cones. Jump rope is the bomb.

I'd like to see somebody run a mile like that. Head perfectly still. Little feet hammering away at the ground. I think if I did something that intensely and quickly for that amount of time, I'd throw up.

Why do they say "caught hook, line and sinker" when really, the order of action would probably be more like, "caught sinker, hook and line"? The fish spots the sinker, gets hooked and then gets drawn on the line.

Wouldn't it be easier not even to mess with any of that crap? Heck yeah.

That's the basis for noodling, which is catching catfish barehanded. The noodler wades into catfish friendly water, which is often shallow and dirty, and looks for places where catfish might be hanging out, like mud holes and storm drain outlets. Once the noodler finds a good spot, she sticks her arm into the hole and wiggles her fingers until a catfish is tempted to bite.

Mostly the bite happens a good ways up the forearm, at which point the noodler grabs the catfish from the inside and pulls. Or she just pulls, anticipating that the catfish will not be smart enough to let go once it's got a hold of her delicious arm. Ideally, the fish comes up and onto the boat. Usually, there's a little bit of a fight while the fish attempts to pull the noodler back into the hole, presumably to eat him.

The documentary about catfish noodling actually has a soundtrack by the Flaming Lips, which just increases the weirdness of everything. There's also a sequel, which makes it twice as weird.

I bet you could make a pretty decent urban version of this by sticking your pinky finger into holes in sidewalks where you think rats might live. Or if you suspect there to be a possum in a tree, you might try to noodle the possum on out, which would make for something this side of spectacular as well.

I've been real out of it in terms of the blogging because of a cross country move, but I've seen me enough sexy Wii Fit videos to know that I had to get one, so I did. I got to Circuit City about an hour before open and scored the 8th voucher out of 8 vouchers to get one of the Wii Fit boards that morning.

Already, I've started in on my quest for 22 BMI (I'm a bit over right now) and one of my favorites activities has been Wii Fit Ski Jump. I can't figure out exactly what I need to do to get the big distances though. I've checked YouTube and what I've got is...

Obviously cheatin':

And somewhat excessively costumed:

I know it's not sexy naked ladies ski jumpin', but you take what you can get.

Dex and I got an email publicizing this event called Rejected Olympics:

The Rejected Olympic Events will be broken down into four categories: strength, stamina, accuracy, and intellect. Each day different games will be added in each of the four categories for a total of about 100 games over the course of the event. They’ll range from Samurai watermelon chopping to trivia games to bottle cap shooting games.

Players will choose a town to represent during the Rejected Olympics (akin to a country in the real world games) and have the opportunity to win virtual prizes for individual performance and virtual medals based on you towns overall performance. Like the Beijing Games, all the action in the Rejected Games will be captured on an ESPN style scoreboard and leaderboard and covered by the Rejected Olympics news desk complete with virtual broadcasters.

It all starts July 21.  I'm looking forward to seeing what they chose for their 100 events.

I was watching Live with Regis and Kelly a few weeks ago and Kelly heard about this high heels sprint and guaranteed she'd win. Live ended up sponsoring the race and Kelly entered.

This week Kelly participated in the High Heel-a-thon for the show as Regis watched.

via thesuperficial.com

Kelly was blown off the line at the start by large amazon women who competed in track at the college level.  They were running like they were wearing track shoes, perfect form and all out.

The winner set a World Record in the Guiness Book doing 150 yards in just over twenty seconds.  She was awarded $25,000.