July 18, 2004

KNOW what I hate most about doing this column? It’s when I find a really good “sport” (using the word in its loosest possible sense) to write about, only to discover it doesn’t have a website. Yes, 2004 Redneck Games, I’m talking about you.

So this week we’re off to Florida for the Sports Park Swamp Buggy Races website (swampbuggy.com). For once I’m at a loss to take the mickey out of a site, as everything you ever wanted to know about swamp racing is here, in great detail.

Swamp buggies came about back in the 1930s to make it easier for rednecks to go hunting in the swamps and bogs of Collier County. Some enterprising farmers took normal tractors and added huge balloon tyres to them in order to negotiate the terrain. Every October – the start of the hunting season – buggy owners would congregate and head off into the swamps.

By 1945 they’d started racing them and four years later the race became “official”. Although, to be fair, at least this is one American sport that doesn’t class itself as the “World Championships”. It’s held three times a year in Naples, Florida, and now attracts thousands of spectators and upwards of 80 competitors, from those attempting the course in standard Jeeps to those who’ve got a modified vehicle that’ll produce 1,000hp.

But it’s not all about driving something that looks like it’s out of Mad Max around a track made out of mud, oh no. The lucky winner also gets to do the Swamp Buggy Queen Mudbath, which involves jumping into the wettest, slimiest part of the course while holding a 19-year-old girl in his arms. So there is a point to all this.

Have a look at the picture galleries, which provide a photo-history of the sport down the ages. Why people would want to risk their lives on these things is beyond me, although having seen the Swamp Buggy Queen pictures, I can understand it.