"Cotswold Olimpicks" alive and kicking  
Thu Mar 11,10:14 PM ET  

By Meg Clothier

CHIPPING CAMDEN (Reuters) - Greasy poles, girl guides and a Greek who forgot his underwear have all played their part in England's 392-year old version of the Olympic Games (news - web sites).
 

One discipline at Robert Dover's "Cotswold Olimpicks", held annually on a patch of Gloucestershire hillside, eclipses everything else: shin-kicking.


"It's the one to win, no doubt about it. It's the blue riband event," defending champion and pub landlord Joe McDonagh told Reuters.


"You don't tickle them, you give them a good thwack. But not with your toes, you need to use the inside of your foot," he added from behind the bar of the Seagrave Arms.


Bob Wilson, chairman of the Games' organising committee nodded. "Joe's just right for it. Not too tall and not fat. You need a low centre of gravity."


But McDonagh is cautious about whether he will recapture the title. "There's every chance but I'll have a look at the other competitors first," he said.


Long before French baron Pierre de Coubertin relit the Olympic flame in 1896, an English lawyer called Robert Dover was masterminding a wildly popular sporting -- and drinking -- extravaganza every Whitsuntide on top of what is now called Dover's Hill outside Chipping Camden. It was a great success.


"Famed Dover, who began the pedigree of Cotswold sports, where each Olimpick game Is paralleld, " trilled one contemporary writer.


BAD BLOOD


Shinkicking, then as now, was a keenly contested event in the old wool town.


"It used to be very, very vicious. In the 17th century there used to be a lot of bad blood between villages and feuds over girls. Boys would hope to meet their rivals in the contest so they could kick eight bells out of each other," Wilson explained.


"We try to keep all the old traditions yet humanise them. People aren't as tough as they used to be."


Humanising the games has dictated that once popular greasy pole competitions have fallen off the agenda, along with bear-baiting and backsword-fighting, now a display event only.


For shinkicking it means steel-capped boots are banned and kickers are allowed to stuff their trousers with hay. But otherwise the rules are little changed.


"You hold your opponent by the shoulders. No implement may be used. And no headbutting, biting, spitting or scratching. Then it's the best of three knock-downs," McDonagh said.  


McDonagh grew up locally and both he and Wilson can remember outsiders, including Koreans, Americans and Greeks, trying their luck at the Olimpicks.

"We had a Greek in national dress last year. He wasn't wearing anything under his kilt. He fell over and gave everyone a bit of a glimpse and had all the ladies falling down the hill," Wilson said.

STRONG CIDER

The Games first lapsed when Gloucestershire was caught up in the English civil war in the 1640s between Charles I's Cavaliers and Oliver Cromwell's Roundheads. They were not revived until after the victorious Cromwell, an infamous killjoy who cancelled Christmas, died and the Merrie Monarch Charles II was restored to the throne.

"It used to be one of probably two or three nights in the year when people could let their hair down. And they did. Cider cost nothing and was very, very strong. People would come a long way on horses and carts and get very drunk," Wilson said.

From then the Games flourished well into the 19th century when, a victim of their own success, they attracted too many troublemakers and were abandoned.

The Festival of Britain in 1951 was the backdrop for the Games' third incarnation and, Wilson said, very little had changed between then and now.

The feeling remains that the Games should be local and uncommercial, Andrew Greenwood, a town estate agent and former Games committee chairman, said.

"It sometimes frustrates me that you could go four or five miles in one direction and people would never have heard of it. Yet if everyone did come we'd be inundated and it would lose its quirky character," he said.

The Games kick off in the evening of Friday June 4. Crowds of around 2,000 are expected to enjoy, amongst other things, wheelbarrow races, coconut shies, clowns, bands, food and drink.

When dusk falls torches are lit and everyone winds down the hillside past the ubiquitous fields of brussels sprouts to the town where they dance in the streets until after midnight.

As for the girl guides: they clear up the mess afterwards.