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Vice Blog

RURAL BLOODSPORTS

Every year, wherever I am in the world, I try to make it back home for Robert Dover's Cotswold Olimpick Games. It's like the normal Olympics, only medieval and with more shin kicking and mud. These games have been running for almost 400 years--since 1612--on the same hill in the Cotswolds and, aside from hanging umbilical chords from tress, they pretty much adhere to every inbred countryside cliche.

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Have you heard of the UK Shin Kicking Championship? Well trust me, London 2012 will be poorer without it. Two contestants stand facing each other with their hands on their opponent's shoulders and kick each other's shins until one of them gives in. The only protection the contestants get is some straw stuffed into their socks, which doesn't help when your opponent wears Doc Martens and kicks you in the nuts, which happens a lot.

This was the Semi-final a match that lasted 15 minutes, one of the longest ever.

Get your opponent onto the ground or make him cry and you win. The winner of this match went on to the final, where he broke his shin bone. A weak shin is the shin fighter's Achilles heel. Shin kicking isn't the only violent sport at Dover's. As it's meant to be a medieval Olympics they invite the local sword geek to show off his big, long swords to enthusiastic men.

To prove their manliness in the cities they have the You Box machine, in the countryside though they beat each other with big fucking sticks. The winner probably gets a satellite dish or an iPad adapter for their Ford or something, they love that stuff out here.

Brazil has the samba, Argentina has the tango, the US has stripping and the UK has morris dancing.

My lovely parents.

Yep, people still dress like this in the Cotswolds all the time.

After the other great sports, such as hammer-throwing, tug-of-war, and relay races is finished, light entertainment is provided by some German Sheperds jumping through rings of fire. Enjoy your £50 tickets, queues, and 1,000-meter race at London 2012, suckers!

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Once the flaming dogs have stopped, the massive bonfire is lit and a lame firework show ensues. I'm up for fireworks in theory, but I've still never seen a good one.

Up until this year the bonfire was on the top of the hill and you could light your own torch on it. However, in a

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bating move, health and safety have ruined our fun by putting the fire at the bottom of the hill with a fence around it. That meant that we had to light the crazily un-safe torches with our lighters. The thousand-strong crowd marched down the hill to the local town of Chipping Campden for a good old-fashioned country-style piss up. Everyone's trying to burn each other's hair as you go.

Yes my friends can shoot fire out of their fingers.

Now I wouldn't blame you at all if you thought something racist was going on, but trust me it's fun for everyone and absolutely not about burning the one black family in the Cotswolds.

It wouldn't be Dover's Games without a mass brawl. I'm not sure how this one kicked off but I imagine it was something along the lines off "Your mother's your sister!" Once the fighting and shitty music wraps up, everyone boards their tractors and drives home, (drunk driving is basically legal in the countryside), knowing another successful Dover's Games has passed, keeping the tradition of violent country sports alive.

HENRY LANGSTON