Minority sports
5 watchers
Mar 2023
11:35pm, 27 Mar 2023
2,734 posts
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tipsku
I was a bit surprised to find athletics and running that far down the list and also with less than 1M members. This doesn't count people who run without being a member in a club though. I see a lot of people running in local parks when I do my training runs. This said, parkrun is still quite small in Germany. These are the latest stats from the website: we have 49 locations who have organised 5477 events between them. 37,433 runners have participated and finished 195,299 times, that's an average of 5.2 finishes per runner. The average finish time is 30:05. 37k runners doesn't add a lot to the total of athletic club members with 766k. And I suspect that there is a considerable overlap. So running isn't a niche sport in Germany per se but parkrun is still a niche event. |
Mar 2023
7:34am, 28 Mar 2023
2,019 posts
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Homeless Kodo
Pffft. You haven’t touched on minority sports until you’re into Dwile Flonking & Shin Kicking. en.wikipedia.org en.wikipedia.org |
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Mar 2023
7:38am, 28 Mar 2023
2,020 posts
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Homeless Kodo
Cornish wresting & its Breton cousin, Gouren, a minority too. cornishwrestling.co.uk en.wikipedia.org |
Mar 2023
7:52am, 28 Mar 2023
36,750 posts
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Ocelot Spleens
Parkrun is pretty small in the UK, 120k a week in a population of 70,000,000 of course running and athletics is minority. Shit Putt who the fuck does that. Mind you, depending on what study you read anything between 25% and 50% ofvsfults effectively take no exercise at all, so all sports are minority sports! |
Mar 2023
10:40am, 28 Mar 2023
3,182 posts
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Fellrunning
My eldest daughter was an elite level race walker. Something that's derided in "mainstream" athletics (even by some on this site). As a junior she had a couple of very unpleasant and off-putting experiences at athletics meetings. Eventually she emigrated to Australia where she enjoyed a long and moderately illustrious career, as it's not seen as niche. GBs loss I guess. I don't regard golf as a sport any more than I regard snooker or darts as a sport. They require a lot of skill and practice but not much athletic input. Ditto shooting. |
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Mar 2023
10:49am, 28 Mar 2023
36,753 posts
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Ocelot Spleens
UK and England Athletics are always trying to big up race walking. Darts is a sport, very much so and very popular. It should be in the Olympics.
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Mar 2023
10:58am, 28 Mar 2023
2,506 posts
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paulcook
Similarly, I was surprised not to see fishing in any of those lists. Depends if you count that as a sport.
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Mar 2023
11:04am, 28 Mar 2023
3,183 posts
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Fellrunning
I guess that goes to show that there are as many nasty and unpleasant people in grass roots athletics as any other walk of life. I remember a lot of very negative stuff (some of the comments people simply wouldn't get away with now), although I accept it was a long time ago (She's now in her 40's) so perhaps things have changed. I hope they have. I like watching darts on TV when I'm able to, especially as I'm completely hopeless at it myself. |
Mar 2023
12:09pm, 28 Mar 2023
162 posts
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hellywobs
My eldest daughter was an elite level race walker. Something that's derided in "mainstream" athletics (even by some on this site). As a junior she had a couple of very unpleasant and off-putting experiences at athletics meetings. Eventually she emigrated to Australia where she enjoyed a long and moderately illustrious career, as it's not seen as niche. GBs loss I guess. I don't regard golf as a sport any more than I regard snooker or darts as a sport. They require a lot of skill and practice but not much athletic input. Ditto shooting. My son did race walking too and competed for England before covid and being a lazy teenager got in the way. Now he's at university he doesn't really do it anymore although when he's home he goes to training. I don't think he's had bad experiences at athletics meetings, but members of his squad certainly kept it quiet from school in a way that they just wouldn't have done if they had been runners. |
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Mar 2023
12:17pm, 28 Mar 2023
3,184 posts
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Fellrunning
Glad to hear he still does a little. Perhaps he'll take it up again in later years. As I said it was a long time ago. The remarks were, in some cases, quite sexualised and, bearing in mind her age then, entirely inappropriate (as reported to me). I doubt it would be tolerated now. |
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