Sol Neelman is not an ordinary sports photographer. You won't find him perched by the corner flag at a Championship football match on a rainy Sunday afternoon, or recording the monotonous procession that was once called Formula One racing. Instead, the 41-year-old from Oregon takes photographs of what he calls "weird sports". "Well," Neelman says when asked by Wired.co.uk why he does what
he does, "I love sports, I love photography, I love to travel and I love weird shit." "One of the first weird sports I covered was roller derby back in 2005," says Neelman, who gave up his jobs as a newspaper photographer after getting "kinda bored". Roller derby (for those unaware) is a women's contact sport played on a velodrome. Two rollerskate-clad teams complete circuits travelling in the same direction, while a "jammer" on each team attempts to lap their opponents to score points. "It was popular in the 50s 60s and 70s as a television thing and it kind of died off," says Neelman. "Then a couple of years ago there were a bunch of hipster chicks who started leagues, and having fun, and owning it for themselves." Today there are over 1,000 amateur leagues worldwide.
It's a classic example of a niche sport getting big -- a trend that, according to Neelman, is more common than you might think. "Snowboarding is another perfect example," he says. "Back in the day if you were a skier and saw snowboarders you thought they were a bunch of punks. But now it's an Olympic sport that's completely respected. People forget that it was once weird."
One sport that's unlikely to go mainstream is the beautifully titled Pig 'n' Ford race, held every year in the town of Tillamook, Oregon. The sport's origin is part fact, part folklore, but the story goes that in 1925, a pig escaped from a farm. Seeing the runaway swine, two farmhands hopped in their Model T Ford and chased the animal around the countryside until they caught it and rode it home -- pig securely held under arm. "Well, they had so much fun that they decided to create a race at the county fair that year," says Neelman. "It basically involves driving around a track in a Model T with a pig under your arm. Now, it's been going on every year since 1925. The cars are the original model Ts from the first races. And, more or less, the drivers are the decedents of the original pig farmers."
But pigs aren't the only animal Neelman's photographed. Surfing dogs -- an internet favourite -- in California is another. "Do you think that dog in that picture can surf?" asks Neelman of his own image (see gallery). "The owners are probably just out of shot. They push of their dog and then, the dog, well, he's on his own."
On the same California trip Neelman photographed a gay rodeo and Segway polo -- the latter a particular favourite of Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak.
Other weird sports are parodies of more established games. "In 1996 the US was hosting the summer Olympics in Atlanta," explains Neelman. "A local Georgia radio station said: 'Screw the stuffy Olympics, we're gonna have our own redneck Olympics.'" The resulting event, the Redneck Summer Games -- which the official organisation banned from using the word "Olympics" -- included the toilet seat horseshoe toss, bobbing for pig's feet, armpit serenading and the mud pit bellyflop competition (see gallery). The games are now an annual event.
Weird sports aren't limited to America's west coast and deep south. Neelman photographed the Guinness World Records' biggest game of dodgeball in New York, featuring 712 players and 600 balls. On another occasion the Big Apple played host to Kaiju -- a sport that's "pro wrestling but clever and funny... and with an intergalactic angle." All you need to know is that it involves some incredibly athletic men dressed as monsters, smashing each other up with papier-mache scale buildings. Think WWF meets
Godzilla. "I feel like it's really an art form," says Neelman.
Sol Neelman has travelled far and wide to document the world of weird sports in all its glorious ridiculousness -- indeed we haven't even touched upon lingerie American football; the transatlantic pancake race; San Francisco's Big Wheel race or even the women who pull a chap along on his bike, by attaching hooks through the skin of her back. He does it thanks to his love of "weird shit" -- the people, the places, the obsurduty and innocent joy that comes from the participation in, and watching of, crazy people doing bizarre stuff around the world. "I'm not going to solve the Middle East crisis," he admits with a laugh. "But I will help educate people in weird sports."
The book Weird Sports is out now and features almost 70 photos captured by Sol Neelman since 2005. Check out our gallery to see all of the sports mentioned.
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
