Photographer Sol Neelman is trying to fund his second book full of weird sports. This time around, he has everything from flaming tetherball to unicycle football to a zombie run.
Riders racing ostriches is a common sport in Africa. It's still not exactly clear how it arrived in Virginia City, Nevada. Photo: Sol Neelman
Riders racing ostriches is a common sport in Africa. It's still not exactly clear how it arrived in Virginia City, Nevada.
Photo: Sol Neelman
The Dirty Dash is a mud run obstacle course mixed with military boot camp. One of the first tricky hurdles to overcome is a series of super slick six-foot walls. Photo: Sol Neelman
The Dirty Dash is a mud run obstacle course mixed with military boot camp. One of the first tricky hurdles to overcome is a series of super slick six-foot walls.
Photo: Sol Neelman
During Red Bull's Miami Flugtag, participants launch homemade, human-powered airplanes into Biscayne Bay. Photo: Sol Neelman
During Red Bull's Miami Flugtag, participants launch homemade, human-powered airplanes into Biscayne Bay.
Photo: Sol Neelman
Lingerie basketball. Photo: Sol Neelman
Lingerie basketball.
Photo: Sol Neelman
A tourist sandboards in the early morning during a camel trek into the Sahara Desert. Photo: Sol Neelman
A tourist sandboards in the early morning during a camel trek into the Sahara Desert.
Photo: Sol Neelman
The annual Santa Speedo Run in NW Portland. Photo: Sol Neelman
The annual Santa Speedo Run in NW Portland.
Photo: Sol Neelman
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The North American Wife Carrying Championship was founded in 1999 at Sunday River Resort in Maine and has been held annually in mid-October at that location ever since. Photo: Sol Neelman
The North American Wife Carrying Championship was founded in 1999 at Sunday River Resort in Maine and has been held annually in mid-October at that location ever since.
Photo: Sol Neelman
The format of chessboxing is pretty simple: a round of chess followed by a round of boxing. That repeats until an opponent wins either by checkmate or knockout. Photo: Sol Neelman
The format of chessboxing is pretty simple: a round of chess followed by a round of boxing. That repeats until an opponent wins either by checkmate or knockout.
Photo: Sol Neelman
Breanna Ziehlke encourages her frog to get on with it at the Calaveras County Fair & Jumping Frog Jubilee. Photo: Sol Neelman
Breanna Ziehlke encourages her frog to get on with it at the Calaveras County Fair & Jumping Frog Jubilee.
Photo: Sol Neelman
Perhaps the weirdest part of Swamp Buggy Races is the celebratory mud bath. Here race winner Eddie Chesser takes a dip with the queen. Photo: Sol Neelman
Perhaps the weirdest part of Swamp Buggy Races is the celebratory mud bath. Here race winner Eddie Chesser takes a dip with the queen.
Photo: Sol Neelman
The Color Run. Photo: Sol Neelman
The Color Run.
Photo: Sol Neelman
The home of bog snorkeling is Llanwrtyd Wells, Great Britain. Competitors must wear snorkels and flippers and complete the course without using conventional swimming strokes. Wet suits are not mandatory, but the smarter swimmers sport them. Photo: Sol Neelman
The home of bog snorkeling is Llanwrtyd Wells, Great Britain. Competitors must wear snorkels and flippers and complete the course without using conventional swimming strokes. Wet suits are not mandatory, but the smarter swimmers sport them.
Photo: Sol Neelman
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Inspired by the Harry Potter book series, Quidditch is a co-ed contact sport with a unique mix of elements from rugby, basketball, and dodgeball. A team is made up of seven athletes who play with brooms between their legs at all times. Photo: Sol Neelman
Inspired by the Harry Potter book series, Quidditch is a co-ed contact sport with a unique mix of elements from rugby, basketball, and dodgeball. A team is made up of seven athletes who play with brooms between their legs at all times.
Photo: Sol Neelman
An attempt to stage the world's largest water balloon fight in Seattle fell short of its goal, but it did raise $55,000 for charity. Kiddie pools used for storage also allowed for a fun, post event urban surf. Photo: Sol Neelman
An attempt to stage the world's largest water balloon fight in Seattle fell short of its goal, but it did raise $55,000 for charity. Kiddie pools used for storage also allowed for a fun, post event urban surf.
Photo: Sol Neelman
The Annual National Chuckwagon Races in Clinton, Arkansas. Photo: Sol Neelman
The Annual National Chuckwagon Races in Clinton, Arkansas.
Photo: Sol Neelman
Brandy Rettig hugs French Toast, aka The Awful Waffle, one of the popular characters at Kaiju's Live Monster Wrestling. Photo: Sol Neelman
Brandy Rettig hugs French Toast, aka The Awful Waffle, one of the popular characters at Kaiju's Live Monster Wrestling.
Photo: Sol Neelman
Unicycle football. Photo: Sol Neelman
Unicycle football.
Photo: Sol Neelman
Bloody zombies relax on the lawn while waiting for their shift to begin at Run For Your Lives, an apocalyptic zombie fun run. Photo: Sol Neelman
Bloody zombies relax on the lawn while waiting for their shift to begin at Run For Your Lives, an apocalyptic zombie fun run.
Sol Neelman documents the wild and the wacky in competition, from live monster wrestling to Big Wheel racing and, of course, ostrich racing.
The Portland photographer has spent years traveling far and wide chronicling competition in all forms, many of them silly, some with potential. He made a book out of it called, appropriately enough, Weird Sports, and it was so successful that he’s back with a second collection, Weird Sports 2, which he’s trying to fund on Kickstarter.
“I’m pretty much a one-trick pony,” Neelman says.
That may be true, but it’s been a successful trick. WIRED first wrote about Neelman in 2011, which earned him a recurring WIRED gig chronicling the wacky games, races, and events he’d managed to find.
The latest collection includes everything from flaming tetherball to unicycle football to a zombie run. It would be hard to overstate just how weird some of these sports are. Take wife carrying, for example. Men must carry their partners through an obstacle course; the winners are rewarded with beer. (Beer plays a role in a surprising number of events Neelman covers.) Flaming tetherball and unicycle football are exactly what they sound like, and in the zombie run, racers navigate a 5K course with the undead nipping at their heels.
This is very much a passion project for Neelman, who never makes fun of his subjects. Instead, he appears to be in on the joke and wants to share it with us. He makes little or no money photographing these events and supports himself as a commercial and editorial photographer. He used the money from a large commercial shoot to fund the first Weird Sports, but now has to rely on crowdfunding to get Weird Sports 2 off the ground.
“This is the photography I really care about, even though I don’t make much money, and I just want to find ways to keep doing it,” he says.
Fortunately, Neelman lives in the capital of weird—Portland, Oregon—and can occasionally walk out his front door and find things to shoot. Last time around he photographed people playing urban golf in his hometown, and for Weird Sports 2 he photographed a naked bike ride that drew thousands of participants.
“If you’re gonna ride a bicycle, you might as well do it without any clothes, right?” he says.
From here, there’s still plenty of weird sports photograph, but Neelman says he might have to start venturing out of the country more. In Russia, for example, there’s a swim race where participants have to hold onto sex dolls. And in Japan, there’s a race where teams ride huge trees down grassy slopes. One sport he’d love to photograph that’s only been played in Thailand so far is something called Tazer Ball, which is like football with Tasers. It hasn’t officially landed in the States yet because the organizers haven’t been able to secure a permit.
“I would love to shoot weird sports forever,” Neelman says. “There’s certainly plenty out there for me to do.”
Jakob Schiller is a writer and photographer at Raw File.
