S is for Skeleton

For my A-Z challenge this year I'm taking a look at sports. Olympic ones, ancient ones, weird ones and some just non sporting sports.  I'm not athletic or even particularly fit but there are some sports I enjoy watching and in composing my posts I've come across many that I'd never heard of.  Join me in a sporting journey from the comfort of your couch (or wherever else you're reading this) and thanks for stopping by.

The Olympic sport of Skeleton has got to be one of the scariest -

Skeleton racing involves plummeting head-first down a steep and treacherous ice track on a tiny sled. 
 
In fact the sled doesn't look much bigger than a tray. I watched an item on it during the Olympics and one of the presenters commented that it looked like it was being held together with duct tape and basically it was. The weights and other things inside the sled that can be adjusted need to be accessible so the top layer of the sled can be removed and then put back and held in place with new duct tape! I think the whole set up is a little more sophisticated.
Even so, hats off to anyone daft enough to try it. It is exciting though and I did enjoy watching Lizzie Yarnold retain her Olympic title at the recent games.

Having trained as a dancer, Synchronised Swimming has always appealed to me, except I don't like swimming underwater or out of my depth. I don't actually like swimming much at all but I do enjoy watching the graceful and co-ordinated movements of the synchronised swimmers but the nose clips are not particularly attractive.

I could get into a big debate about the virtues of having shooting competitions but gun laws are such an emotive issue and I can't get on my high horse about recreational shooting when I've actually tried Clay Pigeon shooting. It was something we did on a weekend away for my daughter's 30th birthday and it was actually fun though I did have a sore shoulder afterwards. 

For a weird sounding S sport I give you Sepak takraw, which is a type of kick volleyball but uses a rattan ball. And for a daft sport what about Stacking? As in cards, dice and plastic cups! (And I guess anything that can be stacked.) You could also try Skibobbing combining a bicycle frame with skis. I can just about manage to stay upright on a bike, add in slippery snow and I'd have no chance!
 
There are a number of difficult to pronounce martial arts beginning with S then you have simple names like Snooker which we've probably all heard of and became much more popular once colour TV was introduced. I tried to find a clip of commentator Ted Lowe's classic quote online but without .  His helpful comment was:

'And for those of you who are watching in black and white, the pink is next to the green.'  

Well that would have been as clear as mud which leads me on to the prize for the worst S sport - Swamp Football, yes football played in a swamp. I'm speechless.