14/08/2012
Estonian high flyers take the garden swing to a new level While the world's strongest athletes competed for the last medals in the London Olympics, several dozen Estonian sportsmen contested their own newly invented sports discipline - kiiking.
Kiiking is swinging on a specially made swings and the athlete's task is to carry out a full rotation. The winner is the athlete who performs a 360 degree rotation with the longest length of swing.
This sports discipline was invented 15 years ago by Ado Kosk. He explains that swinging has long been the national tradition in the Baltic States. Estonians have been practicing swinging for ages in various rituals and festivities.
"Swinging over the shaft is a very old tradition. The oldest information I have is from the year 1600 in Riga there were paintings about swinging over the shaft," inventor of the sports discipline Ado Kosk, said.
After the first swinging attempts Kosk realised that the longer the arms of the swings are, the harder it is to perform the full round. So he invented and patented the telescopic arms of the swings, where it is possible to lengthen them in order to increase the load. Therefore it is possible for men or women as well as children to practice this sport - with or without preliminary training.
"Everybody can practice it but it takes a lot of strength, good physical preparation and to be trained. The heights of swings start from 3 meters and end with 8 meters. Only 3 men have swung the 7 meter swing, they are very strong men and average people can't reach 7 meters," Kosk said.
For safety reasons the athlete is tied onto the swings - with special ties both to the arms and the legs. The referee slightly pushes the athlete, and then it is up the contestant- to squat and straighten up again in order to carry out as wide an arc of swinging as possible - with the help of his or her own weight.
"Three things are important: good technique, otherwise there's a lot of useless work, and then, strong legs and endurance because in the end you have to last pretty long," Kiiking participant Mart Saarman said.
For the onlooker the swinging seems easier and simpler than it really is. The athlete has to be brave enough, because by performing the full swing, you are upside down at a height of 15 - 20 meters. Moreover, the gravitation is so strong, that it is physically challenging to squat and straighten up again.
"The legs have to be very strong because body weight becomes quite heavy on the swing and to push it up you need strong legs," sw***er Joosep Mannik said.
The current Guinness World Record in kiiking stands at a swing length of 7 meters and 2 centimetres and is held by Estonian Andrus Aasamae.
Several kiiking sport clubs have emerged in Estonia as well as the federation of this sport, which for a short while used to be a member of the Estonian Olympic committee. The inventor of the kiiking discipline is hoping that in the future the kiiking could become an Olympics discipline.
Copyright: REUTERS
