Cycle ball, also known as "radball" (from German), is a sport similar to football played on bicycles. The two people on each team ride a fixed gear bicycle with no brakes or freewheel. The ball is controlled by the bike and the head, except when defending the goal.
The sport was introduced in 1893 by a German-American, Nicholas Edward Kaufmann. Its first world championships were in 1929. Cycle ball is popular in Austria, Belgium, the Czech Republic, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia, Sweden, and Switzerland. The most successful players were the Pospíšil brothers of Czechoslovakia, world champions 20 times between 1965 and 1988.
Closely related is artistic cycling in which the athletes perform a kind of gymnastics on bikes.
Famous quotes containing the words cycle and/or ball:
“Oh, life is a glorious cycle of song,
A medley of extemporanea;
And love is a thing that can never go wrong;
And I am Marie of Roumania.”
—Dorothy Parker (1893–1967)
“I don’t like comparisons with football. Baseball is an entirely different game. You can watch a tight, well-played football game, but it isn’t exciting if half the stadium is empty. The violence on the field must bounce off a lot of people. But you can go to a ball park on a quiet Tuesday afternoon with only a few thousand people in the place and thoroughly enjoy a one-sided game. Baseball has an aesthetic, intellectual appeal found in no other team sport.”
—Bowie Kuhn (b. 1926)