A Bubbly Morning

Cheese rolling, bog snorkelling, shin kicking, gurning and rounders. All 'sports' that Britain proudly rules the world at. Well, now New Zealand has one of its own: zoom sliding. Of course it lacks the tradition and sheer madness of its British counterparts but at least it's good to know that there are nutters here too.

Radio station, 'The Rock', held the annual (a full and rich history of three years) World Zoom Sliding competition in Hagley Park, Christchurch. Anyway, as this event had been advertised on the radio all week, we were rather curious about it so wandered down to the park at 7am on a Friday morning to see what it was all about. It seems that zoom sliding simply involves sprinting to the take off line and then hurling oneself through the air to land on a slippery piece of plastic, trying to slide as far as possible through the detergent bubbles. Some ‘athletes’ claimed to have trained hard for this event (Developing a big enough belly to cushion the landing perhaps?), and it was all rather good natured, except for Mr Arena who was taking it way too serious and unfortunately (not) missed out on actually winning the event.

The Rock's radio show, 'The Morning Rumble', was broadcast live from the park. Co-presenter Jonno involuntarily entered the competition but only reached a sad and miserable distance of 5m. To be fair, he did not get a run-up, nor had he been able to lube up his body.

The winner won $400, whilst his brother Dave (in a lovely leopard skin G-string) and the winner of the event in 2005, came second.

Anyway, with a free sausage sizzle (yes, even at that hour of the morning) and fresh coffee we had an enjoyable morning watching the spectacle, before walking down to work, for another hard day in the office!