There's A World Cup Of Balloon Keepy-Uppy And It Looks Incredible
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If you've ever drunkenly sprinted around a party trying desperately to keep a balloon off the floor with any part of your body that you can get to it with, here's just the sport for you.
Check out the Balloon World Cup below. Yes, this is a real thing, and it looks utterly bizarre, but also a whole heap of fun, too.
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Weirdly enough, this whole competition - staged in the Spanish city of Tarragona - was organised by Barcelona football superstar - and Mr Shakira - Gerard Pique, alongside a Spanish YouTuber called Ibai Llanos.
The aim of the game is simple, but being good at it might be a completely different story.
Basically, you just have to keep the balloon from touching the floor, and you can do that any way you see fit.
However, you are also trying to stop your opponent from being able to reach the balloon, so there are tactics involved.
The small court on which this game - which will surely be considered for the Olympics in future - is played contains a number of obstacles such as living room furniture, a car, an arcade game and - for whatever reason - a gigantic pack of Mentos.
To say that it's a stressful watch would be an understatement, but it certainly has potential as a spectator sport.
In the end, out of participants from 32 different countries, Peruvian competitor Francesco de la Cruz was crowned the champion.
After the event, co-organiser Pique said: "It's been amazing, it's something totally different. Sometimes you have to get out of your comfort zone and try new things."
It seems as if the tournament was inspired by a number of viral videos shared by three siblings from Oregon in the USA.
Antonio, Isabel, and Diego clearly got bored during lockdown and hit upon this game as a way to keep themselves occupied.
Antonio said: "We played the game as kids, and then, during the start of quarantine for Covid, we wanted to play it again.
"We started arguing with each other over if it hit the ground or not, so we started taking videos in slow-mo to see if it did, and then finally it got to the point of let's post this video of us on TikTok.
"When I woke up the next morning it was completely viral, like a million likes, and then after that we just decided to keep playing and played more and more until one of our rounds got the attention of Ibai and Pique."
Brothers Antonio and Diego even managed to appear in the Balloon World Cup, though didn't manage to win in the end.
The Peruvian winner, 18-year-old Francesco de la Cruz, said: "I am very, very happy, I thank God that I have been able to achieve this."
So are we, Francesco. So are we.
Featured Image Credit: Alamy
Topics: SPORT, World News, Funny, Interesting, Weird, YouTube, TikTok
