Diggin' Holes: Professional Shoveling

Team Shoveling at its finest.

     Some sports are really strange, some are just epic. There are also some, think why anybody would ever do it? Our next sport is the just that. Yep, it is professional shoveling. Prominent in most of Russia, professional shoveling does not have a large fan base in America. While there are some who compete in parts of Minnesota and Oregon, most people will have to go to Mother Russia to face the real competition.

  

    Now, you probably could guess the rules of this competition. The point is to out-shovel the competitor. Whether it is teams of people or a single shoveler, it is basically just shoveling. However, there are different events within the sport of shoveling.  A basic singles event is to shovel snow to create a pile 5 meters high. It takes strength and endurance to enable a shoveler to get the last scoops of snow on top of the pile.  Snow is not all that is shoveled. The competition that occurs in the summer months of Russia is shoveling dirt. A different set of equipment is needed for this event like a sharper tip on the shovel. The object to this event is to shovel a hole in the ground that is 2 meters wide and 3 meters deep. While this seems simple, the competitor also needs to get themselves out of the hole in order to be considered the victor. This causes shovelers to make stairs of dirt, or become great at climbing. While this event is exciting, most fans prefer the original event.

 

     The influence of this sport transcends shoveling out neighbors. People who have participated in professional shoveling also have started making snow fort competitions. Once a year on November 17^th, people gather in St. Petersburg for the annual Snow Fort Competition. Such forts have been known to mimic other historical forts and castles. The winner of last year’s competition created a replica of Edinburgh Castle.

     Professional Shoveling has been economically fortuitous for the shovel making industry. Not only has it creative a competitive market, but the quality of shovels found in the average hardware store has increased as a result. Russian scientists who were originally in charge of researching nuclear weapons now have concentrated their efforts on creating light, durable, yet sturdy shovels. Many alloys have been discovered from such research. While it did not create the perfect shovel, golf clubs have improved dramatically from this research.

     Now I have had a chance to talk with the chairman of the professional shoveling Ivan Sergeievich. “I think that it [professional shoveling] has come a long way in the past few years due because of modern day technology such as the internet…  It has allowed us to publicize throughout many countries besides Russia. This will hopefully result in the widespread recognition for shoveling.”  In this effort to spread the popularity of the sport to different countries, Sergeievich decided that Russian shovelers will be touring this winter to 15 European countries, Canada, and America. Check it out if to see if they are coming to a city near you. 

-Larry McKnight