Review of Most Boring Sports Events in History

5 Most Boring Events in Sports History

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So, you thought that match last night was tedious, did you? Dream on. There's wearisome, there's lifeless—and then at that place'southward tedious, unrelenting boredom.

Everybody will have their "favourite" boring sports contest, probably because they paid skilful money to watch something dreadful. Just only exist thankful that you weren't at whatsoever of these (and if you were, hard luck).

Here are the contenders for the near boring sports events of all fourth dimension. Yep, there is a certain amount of skill involved in producing these gems, and a novelty value to some of the records, merely can anybody say they really would have liked to be at that place to sentry it?

Yous might like to argue virtually the social club of the first iv, or add some of your own. Just nothing, always, will beat out the magnificent, mind-numbing, slumber-inducing tedium of No. i.

5. Cycling Pursuit Final, Italian Track Championships (1968)

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Vanni Pettenella was known every bit "the flying poultryman" because he used to sell chickens before he moved to Milan and became a corking track cyclist.

The Italian's speciality was doing nothing, which was a great skill in itself, on a bike with no gears and no brakes. In tactical caput-to-head sprint races, where first across the line wins, he would balance on the pedals at a rail stand, or sur place, waiting for his rival to take the initiative.

In the semifinals at the 1964 Tokyo Olympics, he held steady, without moving, for 21 minutes (see the above clip). That was nothing compared to the Italian national championships in Varese in 1968, which were televised alive—unfortunately for the viewers.

The commentator had to go off air and return later when he ran out of people to interview. He had nothing left to say equally Pettenella and his rival, Sergio Banchetto, held firm, going nowhere, for more an hour.

People started turning up at the velodrome when they saw what wasn't happening on Goggle box, in the hope of seeing a world record. They got it before Banchetto croaky. Information technology was fiercely hot and he had burned upwardly all his energy. He collapsed off his wheel, and Pettenella slowly pedalled to victory and into the record books after one hour, three minutes at a standstill.

The rules were afterwards inverse to limit the sur place to a maximum of iii minutes.

4. College Football, Georgia Tech 222-0 Cumberland College (1916)

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People who dismiss whatsoever earth football game match that finishes 0-0 as boring just don't go it.

Yes, there have been some stinkers (most notably Reddish Star Belgrade vs. Marseille in the 1991 European Cup final, and PSV Eindhoven vs. Benfica in the aforementioned contest three years earlier), only there have been some memorable goalless games, such every bit Italy vs. England in Earth Cup qualifying in 1997, and the archetype Euro 2000 semifinal when The netherlands missed two penalties and Italia, downwards to x men for near of the game, held on to win in a shootout.

No, what's actually dull is a one-sided no-contest. In that location was Arbroath 36, Bon Accord 0 in 1885 (Bon Accordance were a cricket team who were mistakenly accepted every bit entrants to the Scottish Cup), and more than recently, in 2001, Australia beat American Samoa 31-0 in a World Cup qualifier.

Surely the most ho-hum game of all, though, was in American college football in 1916. John Heisman, the famous autobus who gave his proper noun to the trophy that is nevertheless awarded every year to the flavor's most outstanding player, was the "mastermind" of the scoreline.

He wanted revenge for a 22-0 rout of Georgia Tech's baseball team past Cumberland College, from Tennessee, which had fielded professionals in their lineup in 1915. Cumberland had stopped playing football simply failed to notify Georgia Tech and had to fulfill the fixture nether threat of paying thousands of dollars in compensation to Georgia.

A random grouping of students were rounded up, and they were hopeless from start to cease in Atlanta. All they were good at was fumbling. It was 126-0 at halftime, at which point Heisman told his team, "We're ahead, only you merely can't tell what those Cumberland players have up their sleeves. They may spring a surprise. Be alert, men."

At least he agreed to shorten the second half to fifteen minutes.

3. Cricket, Geoff Allott'southward 77-Ball Duck (1999)

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RUI VIEIRA/Associated Press

The keen Viv Richards blasted a Test century off 56 balls against England in the famous "blackwash" series in 1986.

He batted for 81 minutes. Geoff Allott batted 20 minutes longer, faced 21 more assurance than Richards and scored 0.

The world record for the longest innings without scoring had stood for more than 50 years when Allott walked out to bat for New Zealand against Southward Africa in Auckland 15 years ago.

The Guardian summed information technology up neatly the following day:

Geoff Allott, a left-handed swing bowler with a Test average of 2.57 batting right-handed, batted for 101 minutes to record the longest nought in Test and first-grade history. As news of Allott'south impending accomplishment spread effectually the ground, the oversupply of several 1000 cheered loudly and the modest 26-yr-onetime, who has a career total of 86 first grade wickets compared to a total of 83 runs, raised his bat and acknowledged the applause.

Allott's stoic endeavour helped New Zealand to rescue a draw later South Africa had scored more than 600.

Boring innings, deadening days and boring matches are commonplace in cricket. Ane of the biggest bores of all was the "timeless Test" played in 1939, when South Africa set England a target of nearly 700 to win. They were a mere 42 brusque after nine days of play, with v wickets in hand. But they had to call it a depict or they'd take missed the boat home.

2. Motor Racing, US Grand Prix (2005)

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"Without question, it was the strangest race I commentated on in F1," said Maurice Hamilton, the BBC commentator and old Observer motor racing correspondent, afterward the U.S. Grand Prix at Indianapolis.

When a row over tires and prophylactic went unresolved, fourteen of the cars that took office in the parade lap—all of them with Michelin tires—and then withdrew, leaving simply six to "race."

The two Ferraris, driven past Michael Schumacher and Rubens Barrichello, went off in front and stayed there. There was no overtaking, and zip interesting happened, apart from angry fans throwing bottles and beer cans onto the track. The fiasco did more impairment than whatever other to the brownie of Formula I in America.

one. Billiards, Tom Reece's Half-Million Break (1907)

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Let's face information technology: Those other examples are mere pretenders. Cipher can ever, or will ever, match the most boring event in the history of sports. It was off to a flyer when the challenge was made: first thespian to half a million points. And one of them, poor soul, had to sit down in that location doing cipher for more than five weeks.

This was 1907, a few years after a new technique had been introduced to the pop game of billiards (so popular that eight meg tuned in to a BBC radio broadcast of Tom Reece explaining a new shot).

Reece, a great player of the fourth dimension, was up against Joe Chapman in the big match, which was staged in Soho with the specific aim of setting a world tape before the rules changed.

The method for scoring all these points was the "cradle cannon," in which a player manoeuvres the balls until two of them are "locked" at the entrance to a pocket, and thus never move when the object ball delicately kisses them for a scoring cannon.

Chapman had the better of the exciting early on play, building a atomic number 82 of 878-483, before Reece got what he wanted, playing the balls into the "cradle" position (the movement was banned a few months after).

He and so set up about scoring at a rate of ten,000 a day, took a day off and carried on scoring even more chop-chop as time went by.

Spectators drifted in and out, and off to sleep. One of them went into such a deep sleep the players left him in that location overnight, to exist found the post-obit morning by the cleaners.

There were frequent breaks in play to movement to some other table, where snooker challenges took identify, just to requite Chapman something to exercise. Some sessions were played overnight, and when the players took a interruption, the balls were covered with a lid box then they'd be in position for a restart.

The match went on for more than five weeks, and Reece—who after became a favourite of King George Five—won with a break of 499,135. The lucifer was publicised throughout the British Empire, thanks largely to the unsung hero of the lucifer.

Every bit Reece wrote in Cannons & Big Guns in 1928, George Reed of the Sporting Life saturday through every minute of the break. "His task was harder than my own," said Reece. "He stuck it out like a Briton."

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Source: https://bleacherreport.com/articles/2070857-5-most-boring-events-in-sports-history

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