Is there a town or region in your country known for a sport that isn’t that big in the rest of the country?

19 comments

1. Rugby in Italy is mostly played in the north east, with some presence in Abruzzo, Tuscany, Milan and around Rome.

2. Friesland is known for skating ( although the entire country skates if it’s possible and skating is still a popular sport there are a ton of well known frisian skaters, the most important stadium is in Friesland and the most important outdoor event is the 11 cities tour) , the sport of fierljeppen is also better known under it’s frisian name than the dutch name ( poolstokverspringen ) ( basically it’s jumping over a body of water as far as possible using a pole ).

3. The Swedish island Gotland has a [the Stånga Games](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St%C3%A5nga_Games), similar to the Olympics with Gutnish games, which includes Pillow fight on a pole, “arse hook” (arm-wrestling with your right leg arse-to-arse), throwing flat rocks/throwing poles etc.

4. Not sure but I recently found the most absurd sport on Earth recently – Kabaddi

5. The southwest of France has rugby as the number one sport, above even football.

   Marseille and the whole region of Provence have Pétanque.

   There is also the case of regional sports such as the Basque pelota, and “geography-based” sports (mountain climbing is ofc more popular in the Alps than in the Beauce)

   Edit : interstingly, our overseas territory Guadeloupe seems to like fencing very much !

6. Ice Hockey is more popular in Carinthia than in other parts of Austria.

   Fistball is basically exclusively played in Upper Austria.

   And Winter Sports overall are more popular in the mountains than in the East, but they’re still quite popular everywhere.

7. In my area, 34 herault, there is a very unique game : tamburello
   https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Tamburello_by_country

8. Italy has quite a few of these, I’ll try to list them:

   1) Ice hockey in South Tyrol : some of their teams play in the Austrian league. Until a few weeks ago we never heard anything about football from them;

   2) Baseball in the towns of Anzio and Nettuno, near Rome. They liked it so much (it was introduced during WWII by the Americans) that it’s still the most common sport there (and their baseball stadium is bigger than the football one);

   3) Romagna area for motorcycles. Granted that it’s a pretty popular sport… But most major pilots come from Rimini, Cesena or surrounding towns and provinces. The only major exception is Max Biaggi who is from Rome;

   4) the town of Cembra, in Trentino, produces most of the curling athletes;

   5) most of the Olympic medals in Taekwondo come from Mesagne which is a town of 20000 near Brindisi, Salento.

9. Almost everywhere in Germany football is king, with the exception of the far north, Kiel and Flensburg specifically, where they seem to care more about handball.

   In southern Bavaria there area couple of hockey towns (Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Bad Tölz, Landsberg, Rosenheim and many more) where the local hockey club is the most important institution. I grew up in one of those towns and never cared too much about hockey, but the rivalries between them are epic!

10. Hornussen is more or less only played in the canton of Bern.

    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hornussen

11. A gym in my city, Barcelona, has such a good waterpolo team that approx half its titular members are part of the Olympics team

12. Different pilota valenciana variants on each side of the Xúquer river; to the south the most popular is [raspall](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raspall) but to the north it’s usually [escala i corda](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Escala_i_corda).

    Here’s a match of each if you’re curious:
    [Raspall](https://youtu.be/W6rSYNFenNE)
    [Escala i corda](https://youtu.be/zotwahnY12c)

13. Many Italian skiers come from South Tyrol. Just think of some of the national Alpine skiers: Dominik Paris, Christof Innerhofer and Stefano Gross. Curiously enough, this is particularly true for men, while for women the situation is rather different: Federica Brignone, Sofia Goggia and Marta Bassino are not originally from the province of Bolzano.

14. We have “Klootscheeten” in the north or at least near the Lower Saxon coast. The ball is called “Kloot/Kloat” and “scheeten” means to shoot. Apparently it’s of Frisian origin and hundreds of years old.

15. Winter and alpine sports in Bavaria, sailing in Schleswig-Holstein.

    Also football is less popular in the East and their teams are less successful. A classic chicken or egg situation. Doesn’t really help that their most successful team is (in)famous for being owned by an Austrian neo-Nazi.

16. Yes, [cricket is a thing in Corfu](https://cricketcorfu.com/index.html), and not in the rest of Greece.

17. [deleted]

18. Ice hockey is huge in my region because of the success of the local ice hockey team (Puigcerdà). For reference, there’s only like 4 or 5 professional ice hockey teams in all of Spain (ours included).

19. Less popular sports will often be hosted in the Belgian league with only two or three teams in the country so they’ll be really localized. Apart from such extremes there are no regional differences within the country. A sport will either be popular nationwide or be rather niche.