Sauna Championships, Competitor Both Meet Their Sweaty, Sweaty End
There are some amazing things going on in Finland, you guys. The low crime rate, the country’s robust potatoes. Not to mention the Finnish vodkas. But nothing tops Finland’s annual World Sauna Championships (or “Saun-a-thon 2010″ as I’ve been calling it around the office).
.
I’ll skip to the twist ending and tell you that the Championship concludes with the two finalists being taken to the hospital and only one coming out alive. Now I’ll Kurosawa my way back to the middle of the story and explain why this doesn’t make the WSC any less legitimate a sport.
What’s not sporty about a few dozen fellas in their underwear sitting in a room that happens to be 230-degrees Fahrenheit until their body shuts down on them? That’s way sporty. If walking around, whacking balls around for 18 holes can be a sport, so can sitting perfectly still, sweating them right off. Remember also, this is Finland, we’re talking about.
For 11 years now, Finland has played host to a contest in which participants sit in a sauna and try to withstand a blistering heat longer than everyone else. Simple? So simple, in fact, video of the event makes it appear more like a torture demonstration than anything that displays skill other than staying alive (a feat which, even the winner this year, couldn’t accomplish).
“The Russian competitor has died [from burns and trauma] in (the) Sauna World Championships,” the head of the competition Ossi Arvela said in a statement about Russian competitor Vladimir Ladyhensky.
Arvela added that the Finnish runner-up, Timo Kaukonen, (a 5-time “winner” and the reigning champ) was also rushed to a hospital for emergency treatment. Had each contestant undergone a medical check? Indeed they had, but what tests could they have performed to ensure 135 different men could withstand six minutes on the surface of the sun?
Oh yeah, the collapsing all happened six minutes after the contest started. This wasn’t an accident that happened after hours of slow boiling. Over halfway to the temperature books are known to burst into flame. Six minutes.
But what about the kicker? Wait, how’d you know there was a kicker? These stories always have a kicker. Okay, here’s the kicker:
Moments before the final, Kaukonen told the Norwegian newspaper Verdens Gang that the saunas used for the 2010 championship were a lot more extreme than the saunas used for previous competitions.
He knew? He walked into a sauna knowing it was hotter than, well, than a championship-level sauna. That’s gumption. That’s moxie. That’s … kinda foolish.
Arvela has already said that the event has probably seen its last sweat droplets, but that a final decision will not be made until after an investigation of the incident is complete.
Um, I’m pretty sure the cause of death was being in a 230-degree room for the time it takes to listen to all of Aerosmith’s “Livin’ On the Edge.” Case – and sauna door – closed.
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Photo courtesy of Flickr
Posted by
Adam
on Aug 10th, 2010 and filed under
Miscellaneous.
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