Here are the most bizarre sporting world championships taking place in the UK this year

Sorry to break it to you, but you’ve probably run out of time to become a world champion at your favourite sport.

I know, it’s probably not the sort of thing you want to be hit with in mid-January, but sometimes painful truths are what you need to move on with your life.

You can set yourself more realistic targets. Like running a half-marathon, perhaps, or joining the gym.

There’s another alternative, though – why not take up a niche sport and try to lay claim to the title of best in the world this year.

If that sounds preposterous, you might just have the wrong kind of ‘sport’ in mind.

No sign of any lawnmowers or black pudding in your game of choice? Well that’s your first mistake.

Holiday Cottages have rounded up some of the UK’s weirdest amateur sporting events, all of which will take place before the end of 2018.

Spanning England, Scotland and Wales, many of them are open to entries from the public, though you can definitely show up to watch them all and get a feel for whether you might want to take the plunge in 2019.

And we’re using ‘take the plunge’ in a very literal sense for the World Bog Snorkelling Championship, which takes place in Llanwrtyd Wells in Wales in August.

It’s exactly what it sounds like – swimming two lengths of a bog, equipped with a snorkel and fins – but hey, you can end the day as a world champion, and how many other chances will you have to do that?

That’s not the only world championship event, however. You can also become the best on the planet at black pudding throwing.

As we think we’ll be saying for a lot of these entries, yes, you read that right.

It involves lobbing a black pudding at a plinth topped with Yorkshire puddings and seeing how many you can knock off, like some kind of weird game of carb skittles.

It’s taking place in Ramsbottom, Greater Manchester, in September.

If you’re still reading and wondering what big sporting event is taking place in Scotland, it’s the comparatively sensible caber toss.

For the uninitiated, it involves running and lobbing what is essentially a tree trunk, and trying to get it to fly in a straight line.

If you’ve never taken part before – and let’s be honest, you almost certainly haven’t – it isn’t about how far you throw the thing; rather it’s about how close you can get it to a 12:00 position from your starting spot.

There are countless other bizarre sporting events taking place this year, including the world championships in Welly Wanging, Egg Throwing, Toe Wrestling and Stinging Nettle Eating.

The first to take place this year will be the hurling of the silver ball, in Cornwall in February – one of those instances where it’s exactly what it sounds like and yet still leaves you very confused.

You’ve also got the Shetland Pony Grand National and Tetbury Woolsack race both coming up, while if you want to become Britain’s best lawnmower racer, you’ll want to get yourself over to West Sussex in August.

Perhaps the strangest of them all, however, is April’s Egg Jarping Competition in Peterlee, County Durham.

It’s a one-on-one game, with both players holding a hard-boiled egg. The task is to hit the opponent’s egg, point to point, and crack it without cracking your own.

Who needs the FIFA World Cup?

(Images: Rex)