21st century Jousting

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**reds8n**

https://www.countrylife.co.uk/news/jousting-comes-21st-century-cutting-edge-var-technology-200560#zHXohXsDOqe96G6P.99

Jousting gallops into the 21st century with cutting-edge VAR technology

The ancient sport of jousting being shaken up by the use of VAR technology to score competitions at English Heritage venues this summer

Jousting, England’s first national sport, is being brought into the 21st century as English Heritage introduces Video Assisted Referee, or VAR, sports technology to its jousts across the country this summer.

Today at Pendennis Castle in Cornwall English Heritage’s jousters are being subjected to the scrutiny of the same vision processing technology as used in tennis, football and rugby for the first time, as sports specialists Hawk-Eye track and use video replay to accurately score the competitors’ moves.

Jousting requires an extremely high level of strength, agility and skill as the athletes wear heavy armour and control a 12ft lance as well as a horse, as they charge towards each other at speed. Scoring depends on hits with the lance: different parts of your opponent’s shield and helmet are worth a graded number of points, which means accuracy is vital to the overall score. Today, these hits will be able to be properly verified for the first time, says English Heritage.

The charity is running a campaign for jousting to be recognised as an Olympic sport: in 2017, double Olympic gold medallist Victoria Pendleton became English Heritage’s most high-profile jouster after the charity challenged her to try her hand.

Emily Sewell, English Heritage’s Head of Events, commented: ‘One of the misconceptions surrounding jousting is that the intense clashes visitors see are highly choreographed, but in reality this is just not the case. It takes a great deal of precision and skill to aim the lance at a moving target, and it also currently requires our Knight Marshall to accurately observe the location of each hit every time, which is quite a challenge.

‘Now, for the first time ever, our jousters today will be able to call on Hawk-Eye’s specialist VAR technology during the joust to verify their points. This is our first trial of this sometimes controversial technology and we’ll be interested to hear what our visitors – and jousters – make of it.’

Jousting as an Olympic sport eh ?!

**Not Online!!!**

GOD DAMN KNIGHTS; GET OFF MY DAMN MOUNTAINS BEFORE I GET MY HALLBERD!

**Grey Templar**

Jousting should definitely be an Olympic sport.

While we're at it, lets add HEMA as well.

**Crispy78**

Will have to ask my brother if he's heard of this on the way. Very much his field - works for a historical interpretation company doing fight choreography etc for Historic Royal Palaces.

This is him at Hampton Court - chap in the black trousers and purple sleeves from around the 0:35 mark. He also commentated the joust later.

https://youtu.be/i4MyaQjcjoo

**Ouze**

I would 100% watch jousting competitions.

**ZergSmasher**

I think this is really cool and I'd be all for it becoming an Olympic sport. I'm not sure how many other countries have anybody who knows how to do it though. Probably more than I might think.

**LordofHats**

I suspect it'll be a one time deal for lack of qualified participants if nothing else.

But it'll be great while we have it

**Grey Templar**

LordofHats wrote:
I suspect it'll be a one time deal for lack of qualified participants if nothing else.

I wouldn't be so sure. The more I've looked into Jousting and HEMA type stuff the more people I find doing it everywhere.

There are already 3 Equestrian competitions in the Olympics, and historically there have been fewer than 10 competing countries some years.

I'm sure there could easily be similar numbers of Jousting competitors. Australia seems to have a lot of HEMA competitions. Add in the US and a couple European countries and you've definitely got enough for a competition. And I'm sure the novelty would drawn in the viewers. I'm sure a lot of people would prefer to watch a Joust instead of yet another man in a speedo doing a swan dive.

**LordofHats**

Grey Templar wrote:
I wouldn't be so sure.

I suppose we'll see. I'm certainly going to watch it

**Ensis Ferrae**

LordofHats wrote:
Grey Templar wrote:
I wouldn't be so sure.

I suppose we'll see. I'm certainly going to watch it

Also. . . correct me if I'm wrong but isn't there some rule stating that if an event gets admitted to the Olympics it gets three Olympiads to "catch on" and keep its status?

IIRC, this is why Baseball and Softball got the axe: one or two countries were viewed as having an "unfair" advantage (ie. the US in softball) and after their third Games was dropped from Olympic programming.

Personally, I'd love to see jousting as there aren't really enough contact sports (for me, meaning more like boxing and rugby, and less like judo/freestyle wrestling), and furthermore, I think its a TV/broadcaster friendly sport: a single jousting run is what, 10-20 seconds, BAM!!! and then they are resetting for the next run. . . There's opportunity for a short commercial and/or replay dissecting the action in between the runs, which is great from the cynical side of things (cynical: the advertisers and anyone else there purely to make money off of the games)

**nfe**

English Heritage began their 'campaign' to make jousting an Olympic sport for the 2016 Olympics and had zero success.

I don't think the Federation Equestre Internationale even acknowledge that it exists, and the Olympics wont even consider it without it having a recognised international governing body (the FEI are the governing body for all Olympic equestrian sports).

That's only step one. After that you need to enforce the Olympic doping charter consistently, including out-of-season, and I'm not sure jousting has the money for that.

Then there's the big issue: to be admitted a sport must be widely practiced by men in at 75 countries across four continents and by women in 40 countries across three continents.

I think its chances are virtually nil. It's just too far into novelty territory. Maybe it could have a chance if it updated like fencing rather than insisted on seeking to preserve plate armour etc (and 'respecting the Olympics' modern traditions' is another criteria - albeit one open to interpretation). As it is I think it would be a laughing stock. Most HEMA disciplines are the same, but they could maybe find their way in by a fencing association.

**Elbows**

I actually thoroughly enjoyed the short lived reality show "Full Metal Jousting" (lasted one season). It could have become a decent show, but they tried a little too hard with the "drama" and the main host was kind of a doofus.

It was an actual reality show though which was a nice change. Did showcase how brutal that sport can be. Very cool and I'd gladly watch more of it.

**jhe90**

Elbows wrote:
I actually thoroughly enjoyed the short lived reality show "Full Metal Jousting" (lasted one season). It could have become a decent show, but they tried a little too hard with the "drama" and the main host was kind of a doofus.

It was an actual reality show though which was a nice change. Did showcase how brutal that sport can be. Very cool and I'd gladly watch more of it.

I remember that show. It was pretty acurate at showing how dangerous it could be, and why it was such a entertaining sport for crowds and knights even centuries after the skills became partly obselite.

**Vaktathi**

I've been doing HEMA for several years, mostly Longsword with some Sabre and Dussack thrown in. There's lots of people into it, but a lot are just backyard practictioners and those interested in competing are really spread out. Some of our club members are at combat con in vegas right now for a large event, but our last local (albeit internationally attended) longsword tournament wasnt much larger than a typical class session

**Tannhauser42**

I thought jousting in the 21st century involved Peeps, toothpicks, and a microwave oven?

**timetowaste85**

I would actually watch the Olympics if jousting was part of it!! Always been a fan.

**Frazzled**

*Are they wearing real high grade steel armor or is it something else?

*Jousting used to be a sport that caused its share of injuries. How do they address that?

*I wonder if we could see guys showing up in Mongolian lamellar armor and such.

**Elbows**

In the show, yes they wear modern steel armour and it's still incredibly heavy and exhausting. They also do suffer injuries. No way around it.

**jhe90**

Elbows wrote:
In the show, yes they wear modern steel armour and it's still incredibly heavy and exhausting. They also do suffer injuries. No way around it.

Full steel, with upgrades even like iirc bullet proof plastic in thr visor. Locking neck and helmet section. Though part of the exhaustion was genuine knights where highly conditioned into armour and had it fully hand and custom made to fit.

Yes it was tiring anyway but genuine armour of day was at knights end. Fully tailered and thry trained for years to fight in it.

**Elbows**

Yep, but even Knights didn't adore jousting armour which tended to be heavier with much sillier helmets (often bolted to the damn breast plate!)

**jhe90**

Elbows wrote:
Yep, but even Knights didn't adore jousting armour which tended to be heavier with much sillier helmets (often bolted to the damn breast plate!)

Tyre but that was only way not to break your neck from a impact to helmet at full pelt.

Not all wore silly helmets, some had a show helmet and a practical helmet. The most advanced suits had optional parts and so when you entered the joust or foot. You could adapt your suit as best possible.

A joust plate had bolts to add extra layers of armour on the impacting side.

**ingtaer**

They do a jousting tournament every year in a park near where I live, it would be cool to see it get more widespread coverage though I have a deep hatred for VAR thanks to the football.

**Argive**

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tWVZgp-eQG8

I would 100% watch this.

I went down a rabit hole of "melee" contact sport. Found M-1 Global does a full contact medieval fight thing. I found it very very interesting and you can see some techniques and tactics being employed and would love to see this grow like MMA. Is this what you guys mean by HEMA? Havent heard this before..

I mean look at this madness! Whats not to like!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VlCQ2pBob5Q

I'm a fan of all things contact and if people want to bang their heads in. Let them. As long as they are aware of all the long term damage and risks why should we stop people doing things they enjoy and make a living from it?

I don't mind VAR as long as its justified and doesn't slow down the game too much. It definitely makes a case for less corruption.

**ingtaer**

Argive wrote:

I don't mind VAR as long as its justified and doesn't slow down the game too much. It definitely makes a case for less corruption.

One would hope so wouldn't one, unfortunately experience in this part of the world shows that it adds a whole new layer of corruption to things.

**Argive**

ingtaer wrote:
Argive wrote:

I don't mind VAR as long as its justified and doesn't slow down the game too much. It definitely makes a case for less corruption.

One would hope so wouldn't one, unfortunately experience in this part of the world shows that it adds a whole new layer of corruption to things.

How so ?

**ingtaer**

In the local football competition where VAR was used it frequently made calls that were totally and obviously wrong. Bizarrely these calls were almost always in games where three teams were playing, one of which is the poster boys of the league, one the owners of the league owned shares in and one that was foreign from a different confederation and the calls always went against them. Once or twice would have been coincidence but this was so frequent that even the commentators were calling the VAR out on it.

**Argive**

I see. I thought the idea of VAR is to blast the replay on the stadium screen/ref box for everyone to re-watch while the ref evaluates what call should be made? Then again I don't really know how it is used in football. I may be getting confused with goal line technology..

Things often happen too fast to see properly.
I think it works from American Football perspective.

**ingtaer**

No that is how it is supposed to work! Things like offside calls and dangerous play, anything the ref missed in real time etc. Its just not how it did work...

**Ensis Ferrae**

Argive wrote:

Things often happen too fast to see properly.
I think it works from American Football perspective.

IMO, I think that it seems to work "best" in a sport like tennis (which I guess is what jousting is trying to emulate).
American Football has tried to improve its game through replay, however there is often-times where verbage in the written rule means that the officials cannot use their best judgement (ie,an important part of an incident being 3mm off-screen so therefore, despite other corroborating evidence, we cannot make a change), and we've had game critical mistakes happen on replay because of the way a rule was written/interpreted.

**Argive**

Id happily take jousting without VAR... Its not a deal breaker for me. I will happily watch people knocking the snot out of eachother on horse back with or without VAR as long as I get to watch it!

Didn't frisbee become a discipline ? Or am I imagining things.