Week 5: Ultras

That topic is reserved only for a specific group of people. It’s strongly associated with football but sometimes we can see similar actions on other sport arenas. For some supporters the main purpose of going to some event is to watch a competition between opposite teams. However, there is a group of people which has quite a different idea how to spend time during a sport spectacle.  The official term that describes them is “ultras”. Much before the match they think what to show, how to do it and which resources to use. Effect of their work (only in a situation when there were no problems with organization, attendance at a particular stadium and a few other factors) looks like the following:

I have to say that personally I’m the supporter of Legia so the selection of photos and videos is rather subjective.

People responsible for  show organization  in stadiums often refer to anniversaries of important moments in history. Another special occasion to prepare a show can be when supporters of teams are officially “friends” or the team is playing in the finals of the tournament like the Polish Cup. Below, examples of something prepared for the anniversary of the Warsaw Uprising:

Ultras is something that you treat as your style of life, something incredibly important. Sometimes, their way of understanding what they are doing and ways of showing their loyalty to the team  can be controversial

Some materials are officially forbidden for use in stadiums, especially flares which are dangerous in hands of an irresponsible person. Official football associations punish clubs which supporters brake those rules. This year, European Football Association (UEFA) has imposed a penalty on Legia after one of the matches (one of the reasons was using the flares). Those groups of supporters, which I mentioned before, decided to answer with another show:

After that, UEFA closed the stadium for fans for the next match in the European Cups. Was it worth it? Probably not, but those people have some other idea about that.

What is your opinion about shows made by ultras in stadiums? Do you like their work or in your opinion it shouldn’t exist at all?

Wekk 5: More than sport

Nowadays, on youtube, in TV and other media appears a lot of examples of sports that are a bit showier than regular disciplines. Today, I’m going to show you few examples of sports that I’ve already tried or which I would like to try. Of course most of presented ways of spending time is highly dangerous but in my opining spending whole life without adrenaline provided by such an activities is not complete.

According to my first post on blog (about lifesaving) I want to show you a bit extreme way of rescuing people (which is actually a sport lifesaving discipline). From the perspective of a lifeguard it’s great experience and feeling.

As a curiosity, one of the teams from Poland is specialized in that type of competition despite the fact as we don’t have any boats like that in lifesaving association.

As next (we are still in water environment) I will present you two movies about kitesurfing. This is not only sport, it’s rather style of life. First one shows more advanced version of using combination of board and parachute. Second one is aimed on convincing you that that kind of activity is worth of investment even only for views that we could enjoy in some places.

Another sport good to mention is skiing. Not regular skiing of course, rather something close to flying with skies on feet. Downhill ride on side of mountain or jumping for over a dozen meters height by ramp is reserved for people which are resistant to even short paralysis caused by height/sudden obstacle/unexpected situation (like chasing us avalanche),

Last video is also my personal dream. It’s something called wingsuit flying. Diving without any mechanical components with speed over 200 kilometers per hour has to be incredible experience. Of course it’s not easy to get a chance of jumping from cliff in one-part costume which looks like flying squirrel but totally worth those hours spent on parachute trainings if someone want to feel huge injection of adrenaline and for while get a chance of watching world from perspective of bird.

What do you think about those sports, would you try something like wingsuiting if you had a chance? How about other examples? Any own experiences in extreme sports?

Week 5: Lifeguards

Probably most of us had an occasion to spend holidays at the seaside. Consequently, we recognize distinctive people with brown skin, sunglasses and whistle hanging from the neck, called lifeguards.

Usually people think that our job is to sit a whole day on (or around) a tower, take sunbath and annoy people by throwing them out of water in the middle of sunny day. Sometimes all what we know about lifesaving is what we have seen in the popular serial Baywatch. Today, I will try to describe a day from the life of a lifeguard during holidays.

Normally, duty starts at 9 o’clock in the morning. At this time everything has to be prepared (including lifeguards). Before that time all lifeguards have obligatory warm-up activities which usually mean running on the beach one way and coming back by swimming. After that we have some time to eat breakfast, prepare clothes and other stuff for work and slowly start moving to a place where we will spend next 8 hours. When a team reaches their tower (every season one tower on the beach has its own lifeguard team – usually 3 or 4 people), starts to prepare a workplace. What we have to prepare depends on a day, when it’s windy and rainy the main thing is to seal the tower or other place to hide for the rest of the day (yes, we have to be there even if the beach and water is completely deserted). When it’s sunny all equipment has to be accessible in a few seconds in case of a potential rescue action.

 

What does it look like? Again, everything depends on the condition of the sea, available equipment and what actually happened. Sometimes it means picking up someone using a rowing boat or a rescue board. When a situation is critical, we need the help of a motorboat or a jet ski with a platform.

The most popular technique is something called a tray with a rope. The video should explain how it works. That one is from the competition but a real action looks almost same.

http://youtu.be/6F3pfPiSOkE

That’s all about how lifeguards work when other people enjoy their free time. Hope it wasn’t too boring. What do you think about that kind of a job?