Basque rural sports, known as Herri Kirolak in Basque, is the term used for a number of sports competitions rooted in the traditional lifestyles of the Basque people. They are called deporte rural vasco or simply deportes vascos in Spanish and force basque in French.
Virtually all Basque rural sports have their origin in the two main historical occupations, the baserritarra (farmer) and arrantzalea (fisher), with a larger percentage hailing from the rural background. The sociological changes in the Basque Country have led many of these becoming technically obsolete in the 19th and 20th century. Few continue to exist as rural or marine activities connected to everyday life and have become rare but many have managed to transform themselves into popular sports instead, some of which have become extremely popular.
Winners receive a Basque beret (txapela) as a trophy, hence the Basque word for "champion", txapeldun, literally "one who has a beret".
Betting, both by the competitors and the audience, is very common and popular at such sporting events.
Read more about Basque Rural Sports: The H18K Rural Sports, Other Rural Sports
Famous quotes containing the words rural and/or sports:
“What life is best?
Courts are but only superficial schools
To dandle fools:
The rural parts are turned into a den
Of savage men:
And where ‘s a city from all vice so free,
But may be termed the worst of all the three?”
—Francis Bacon (1561–1626)
“Short of a wholesale reform of college athletics—a complete breakdown of the whole system that is now focused on money and power—the women’s programs are just as doomed as the men’s are to move further and further away from the academic mission of their colleges.... We have to decide if that’s the kind of success for women’s sports that we want.”
—Christine H. B. Grant, U.S. university athletic director. As quoted in the Chronicle of Higher Education, p. A42 (May 12, 1993)