Читать книгу Bushell's Best Bits - Everything You Needed To Know About The World's Craziest Sports - Mike Bushell - Страница 39

Cue the resonant drone of the didgeridoo. Imagine you are tiptoeing across the outback, flattened stick in your hand, ready to flush out your dinner, and it will explain why I was in deepest Hertfordshire, looking for a man in a park. It’s why my daughter and I had a Sunday morning we’d never forget in my original home town of Stevenage.

The boomerang has been used in hunting for more than ten thousand years and it’s thought to have been a weapon used by stone age tribes. It is still a favoured method of some Aborigines, because of its ability to come back. The swishing noise generated by its movement and the way it can sweep around in a circle behind a clump of trees or a bush make it effective for flushing out prey. More commonly though, it is now used in sport, and boomerangs can increasingly be seen hovering in the skies above the UK.

Lucy and I had come to Stevenage for a session with Adam McLaughlin, one of the UK’s finest throwers. He’s been in the sport for 30 years and has competed all over the world. There aren’t many cheaper, more accessible sports. The first thing that struck me was how different the colourful, light, carbon fibre boomerangs were compared to the large heavy wooden one I had been given by a friend on his return from Australia.

Some of the flyers had three arms, others two, and they were small enough for Lucy to get going straight away. They are not going to cost you much more than £10 and to get in some extra practise, the British Boomerang Society has tips on how to make free ones out of cardboard for use indoors.

Now, don’t think for a moment this is just about how far you can throw. This is a sport which like the sky, knows no limits. Adam stepped forward, and like a javelin thrower, drew back his arm before thrusting it forward. With a flick of his wrist, the boomerang cut through the air. It raced to a height of around 200 feet, but then slowed as it started turning. It was like watching a bird of prey circling and hovering, before diving for its victim. It seemed to take an age for it to meander gracefully back down.

We watched in wonder as Adam sat down and rolled onto his back. He stuck his legs in the air, and having read the flight of his winged wonder perfectly, it came to rest on the soles of his feet.

Trick catching is one of the many disciplines in this sport. From the behind the leg catch, the under the leg, to the tunnel catch, eagle catch, Hackney sack catch and one hand behind the back catch. There are many ways to score points. Adam was like a ballerina: spinning, throwing, and jumping. This was the easy part. To up your game, you can throw two boomerangs at the same time and attempt a pair of catches. In competitions, you also score points for accuracy. The less you have to move from your throwing position to make the catch, the higher your mark.

At first, mine were doing their best to fly away for good. I narrowly missed a lady walking her dog, who was oblivious to the swirling stick stalking her hat, while another ended up in a tree. I needed to listen to Adam more carefully.

‘Mike, you need to make your hand into more of a fist,’ he reiterated. ‘Then hold the boomerang in place with the edge of your thumb. You have to make sure you keep it upright too, as vertical as possible. Then take your right arm back, step forward with your left foot and throw as hard as you can.’

It’s a magical feeling when the boomerang turns for the first time. It is as if you have trained your own raptor, and it’s coming back because it wants to sit on your hand. Lucy and the other beginners were having to move even less to catch theirs. ‘It’s quite hard to judge where it’s going to land, as it seems to change and slow up at the last minute,’ said one girl, who added that it’s really good for keeping you on your toes and moving you around.

Even more so when you move away from the trick catching and accuracy competitions. In the fast catch discipline, you have to make as many catches as possible in a minute. In this event, special faster boomerangs are used and can fly back to you at 70 miles per hour. The long distance challenge involves getting the boomerang to travel as far as possible. It only counts though if it comes back past you – in this one you don’t have to catch it. Manuel Schutz is the undisputed king of distance boomerang throwing. The world record he set in 1999 was 238 metres with a full return. No one else has come close to this in years.

One of the most fascinating competitions involves getting the boomerang to stay in the air for as long as possible. Most of us would be happy with 20 or 30 seconds. At competitions its commonplace to be waiting a whole minute for it to land, but Britain’s Adam McLaughlin remembers how he and a dog walker stood and watched in silent disbelief as the hovering and floating lasted for 2 minutes, 43 seconds.

What’s more the boomerang landed only 30 metres from the launch point. It was as if some Aboriginal spirit had brought it to life, and it was making the most of its freedom.

The so-called ‘Aussie Round’ is regarded as the ultimate test of skills, because each thrower has five attempts to get their boomerang to fly out of a 50-metre circle and then come right back to the point where the player is standing in the centre. For a novice this is the hardest test and it will take a lot more training before I can lie on my back in the park, get out a paper and wait for my little boomerang to come home.

I went away from Stevenage with my eyes open to a whole new world. There are no boundaries. It doesn’t matter how fit you are, how big or small, or how young or old you are. You can do it sitting down, and even practise from your bed. The only consideration needs to be other people who might not fancy having a haircut from a spinning boomerang, so please pick your throwing area considerately.

Two of the sport’s big names, Manuel Schutz of Swizterland and American Chet Snouffer, were again among the winners at the 2012 world championships, held over 10 days in Brazil, while there are also now regular competitions and training sessions held across the UK. If you want to watch and learn from the expert throwers like Adam, and need to know the best boomerangs to start off with, visit the home of the British Boomerang Society, www.boomerangs.org.uk