Author: Purple Brolly

Water polo was a sport just waiting to burst onto the scene, considering its rapid spread, not only in Britain but also abroad, although the International Swimming Hall of Fame took until 2003 to honour the inventor, William Wilson (1844-1912). Born in London and raised in Glasgow, Wilson was a keen advocate of daily open-air swimming, even in icy conditions, and as well as teaching swimming he was involved in the administration of swimming clubs in the Glasgow area.

A bizarre forerunner called ‘aquatic football’ was apparently attempted in the early 1870s, whereby swimmers had to use their feet to kick the ball, but when asked to think of a crowd-pleasing event for an annual swimming gala at River Dee in 1877, ‘aquatic hand-ball’ was Wilson’s solution.

Water polo, as it later became known, is said to be the sport requiring the most strength, but even Wilson realised that it was too difficult to control the ball in river currents so he moved it to indoor pools in the following years. As well as formulating the rules of water polo, Wilson was a pioneer of techniques for swim races, such as starts and turns at the end of a length, and for life-saving.

(Top image: David Sanborn at Flickr.com / CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

The Cheltenham Festival ranks alongside other sporting events where one is sure to see the best performances in the most splendid facilities. Like the Wimbledon fortnight, for example, the four days of steeplechase horse racing at Cheltenham in Gloucestershire bear witness to catering on a gargantuan scale amidst the mobilisation of what amounts to a small village of 6,000 staff, including 350 chefs.

Add to that the multitude of race-goers and it is no wonder a train station was built there in 1912, a year after it was decided to fix the venue permanently at Cheltenham’s Prestbury Park. This was formerly part of a Bishop’s estate, with deer, rabbits, hares, oaks and thorn bushes a-plenty. Horse racing was taking place there by the 1830s and the Festival’s origins date from 1860. The Cheltenham Gold Cup, with prize money currently £614,813 for the winner, was inaugurated in 1924 and the cup itself is still the original.

One of the other, shorter, feature races is the Ryanair Chase and that airline puts on an extra 30 flights from Dublin to Birmingham for the Festival. Cheltenham Racecourse has been described as the world’s finest of its kind and the Festival easily attracts a knowledgeable daily attendance of up to 68,500 capacity.

(Image: Carine06 at Flickr.com / CC BY-SA 2.0)