Erstellt am: 8. 7. 2011 - 12:02 Uhr

The Anarchic Radballer

It`s the 50th session of the Viennese Radballer. A game for people with good balance and a good medical kit!

If you go down to the Schwarzenbergplatz in Vienna on a Friday evening in summer, you might come across a confusing sporting scene.

Once a month or so, a group calling themselves the Radballer hold impromptu tournaments under the watchful gaze of the flag-bearing Russian soldier. You might see a bunch of scruffy looking men and women on decrepit looking bikes that look far too small for the riders. They’ll all probably be circling like bees around a blue chair.

What is it all that about?

chris cummins

Radball is an urban and scruffy variant of bike polo that doesn’t even use mallets. A hard lumpy ball, which is partly deflated and coated in sticky tape, is propelled with deft flicks of their bikes` front wheels and the blue chairs are the rather informal goals - two of them placed around 20 metres apart to form a court without visible boundaries.

Flicking a ball with your front wheel is a precarious skill that requires practice, great balance and even greater nerve. Many of the players are shirtless. Their taut, sweat-slickened muscles shine in the early evening sunshine and you can see the past scrapes from falls on their shoulders and backs.

I have a go at riding one of the bikes during a recent session and feel very fragile turning simple wide circles.The bikes are so small so that they can be turned at extremely acute angles. If racing bikes are the noble greyhounds of the bike scene these are the rat-catching terriers – agile and ferocious.

The seat is not directly above the pedals but rather over the back wheel. It`s never used anyway; Radball players stand in the pedals throughout the entire game. I have a go at flicking the ball and almost toppled over, unchallenged by any opponent.

chris cummins

This is modern interpretation of a sport that has its roots in the 19th century. The renaissance seems to have grown out of the recent enthusiasm for single-geared bikes, or "fixies". The fixed gear on the bike allows players a greater degree of control - the gears are usually of a low ratio and useful for quick acceleration rather than sustained speed. The riders can even pedal backwards.

"You can ride them in a really artistic way", enthuses Wolfgang, one of the ringleaders of this strange circus, "you can pull a wheelie or even jump. And you have to make these maneuvers during the game to get an advantage."

There are a few upturned bikes at the edge of the Schwarzenbergplatz and riders are applying sticky tape to the tyres. "Radball is actually an indoor sport", explains Wolfgang, "the tyres are designed for smooth indoor surfaces, and if we didn’t put the tape on the tyres, they would be ripped apart within minutes. It is like sandpaper out there."

chris cummins

A player called Max comes out of the fray of the battle. He's over one metre ninety tall and the bike he is wheeling beside him looks like a child´s toy next to his gangly frame. He says he often scrapes his knees as he pulls tight corners around court. I ask him what he likes about Radball and with a grin he gives me an honest answer "Sometimes I like the pure brutality." But what injuries do players actually risk, apart from grazed knees? "Oh take your pick. You can injure anything you want out there!"

There was a form of bike polo at the 1908 Olympic games in London, but a hundred years on and with a new edition of the London Olympics on the horizon, the sport is, to borrow Mike Skinner`s phrase "cult classic not best-seller". The players on the Schwarzenbergplatz, are recognizable faces from Vienna`s vivid alternative bike scene which includes cycle couriers and critical mass activists.

The Radballers at the Schwarzenbergplatz twist and turn long into the evening, watched by tourists who are sitting on the ledge of the Russian fountain. And then they stop, hopping off their mini-bikes and laughing and joking among themselves. If either team has won, it doesn’t seem to matter – you get the feeling it`s them together against the world anyway.