It’s not every day that you appear live on BBC News kicking the presenter in the shins, but that’s what happened to me after I won the World Shin Kicking Championship.
The shin kicking stadium is as close as you can get to a gladiator arena. Each competitor must face three gruelling rounds of competition, where you hold each others’ shoulders and kick each others’ shins with as much brute force as you can muster. It only ends if you throw your competitor to the floor, or if they shout “submit”.
On the day that I became a world champion, thousands of onlookers lined the Cotswold’s leviathan of Dover’s Hill, all waiting to catch a glimpse of some shin-on-shin action.
My trousers were stuffed with hay to form a makeshift shin pad, and my shoes were plimsolls. There were no gadgets or hacks, it was just me and my competitor kicking it out for eternal glory.
“Anyone can sign up – anyone who is stupid enough like me”
I made my way to the centre of the arena for the first of three fights, the coarse hay dragging against my shins. The crowd grew quiet and in the blink of an eye, the fight had begun and a melee of shin strikes ensued.
Within 15 seconds, I hurled my competitor over my right shoulder and put him down, taking advantage of the spring dew, which had made the grass as slick as banana skin.
I still had two more rounds to go though, so the finish was still a long way off. My second competitor crept forward, his confidence evident from his decision to wear shorts. No hay, no straw, just brute force.
What followed was a 15-minute pummelling to the shins.
I began to strike his shins with my toes, poking feverously, each strike mimicking the sound of snapping branches. The pain in both feet was becoming unbearable as they throbbed with every blow.
The minutes dragged on, with the fight being punctuated only with exhausts from me winding up for my next blow. At one point, the guy ripped my shirt off and then the crowd went mad – it was an incredible feeling and it spurred me on to win.
With what must have been my hundredth strike with my now shattered foot, there was a change in the tune of the fight. The macho figure broke character and let out the faintest of recoil. After that, I knew all I had to do was drop him.
The frantic energy of my second win flowed threw me like an injection of hot fury. The pain vanished from my shattered foot as I grounded myself and slammed Goliath down into the earth.
“The guy ripped my shirt off and then the crowd went mad – it spurred me on to win”
For my third and final fight, what felt like the entire population of the Cotswold were chanting me on – I had never felt more like Russel Crowe as Maximus Decimus Meridius. My shins were purple, bruised and throbbing.
Riding on the adrenaline-fuelled ecstasy, I placed all my weight, my body and my being behind my swing and threw my final competitor away.
The instantaneous feeling of euphoria took hold. In that moment I was mythic in scale: I was hobbling away with the eternal glory of being World Shin Kicking Champion.
Want to join in?
If you want to step into the ring, to challenge Mike at next year’s Shin Kicking World Championship, Odd One Out magazine is offering a trip to Dover’s Hill on Friday May 31.
If you don’t fancy bruising your shins, there is an array of sports to try your hand at. From running races, to tug of war, to even dustbin relays, the Cotswold Olimpick Games had it all. Grab a ticket for your chance to achieve eternal triumph.
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