Cycle ball
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Cycle ball, also known as "radball" (a loanword from German), is a sport, similar to soccer, only the competitors play while riding bicycles. Each of the two people on a team rides a specialized bicycle with no brakes and no freewheel (a fixed gear bicycle). The ball is controlled by using the bike and the head, except when defending the goal.
First made public in 1893 by German-American Nicholas Edward Kaufmann, the sport's first World Championships were held in 1929. Cycle ball is popular in Austria, Belgium, the Czech Republic, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia, Sweden, and Switzerland.
Closely related to cycle ball is artistic cycling in which the athletes perform a kind of gymnastics on bikes.
The most successful players of cycle ball were the Pospíšil brothers of Czechoslovakia, who won the world championships twenty times between 1965 and 1988.
A variant of Bicycle soccer was invented independently by three Canadians in the late 80's. The object involved kicking it between the front wheel and the frame of the opponents bicycle to score points.
[edit] External links
- List with over 420 cycle ball clubs
- UCI's introduction to cycle ball and artistic cycling
- Cycleball on YouTube
