Zegama-Aizkorri 2011

[Bierzo Baggie]

2. Bi.

Basque sports (Herri Kirolak)

So, I’m a korrikalari and I’m going to run in the most important Mendi Maratoia in Euskal Herria. Now this is a really big deal and I’m incredibly lucky to be there at all as the race is heavily over-subscribed. Many a young basque warrior would trade a year’s supply of T-bone steaks to be a korrikalari at Zegama.

Indeed physical activity and sport is pretty central to Basque culture, endurance and mountain sports in particular.

1994: Plaza de los Fueros: Vitoria (Gasteiz)
Top harrijasotzaile (stone lifter) Iñaki Perurena has just hauled an awkward lump of rock halfway up his body. He then releases it and the huge stone lands with an almighty thud which shakes the paving slabs and reverberates around the packed square. The crowd applauds and call out to him in an indecipherable dialect. Iñaki salutes his people.

Somebody comments that an English guy was wearing a t-shirt with one of Iñaki’s poems on and suddenly they are pushing me to the front.

I’d bought this t-shirt from the Kukuxumusu shop (kukuxumusu means “little flea”). In those days it was still a cottage industry. Now it’s a highly successful merchandising industry of multi-coloured Basqueness. On my t-shirt , several columns of colourful motifs represented the wide spectrum of Basque sports.

Harrijasoketa (stone lifting)
Euko Pilota (squash type game played with the hands, gaelic handball?)
Jai alai (similar to the above but using a wicker basket, incredibly fast).
Aizkora Proba (wood chopping)
Sokatira (tug of war)
Estropadak (rowing)
Ahari topeka (ram fighting)
Idi Probak (ox dragging)
Giza Probak (just dragging...)
All of the above was represented on my t-shirt and beneath the pictorial display were a couple of lines of poetry by the stone lifting bertsolari.

Bertsolari: maker of verses. One who composes,sings and improvises in Euskera, oral poet, neolitic rapper...

Iñaki Perurena lifted a 350kg stone in 1990 and then went on to lift a 250kg stone 3 times with one hand.
In 1999 he lifted a 100kg stone continuosly for 5 hours and 4 minutes until he had lifted the bastard 1000 times!!
He was invited to compete in The World’s Strongest Man but declined. Too far from home perhaps..too busy writing poems.

So suddenly they are pushing me to the front and Perurena is signing my T-shirt. His biceps were thicker than my waist.

Iñaki Perurena isn’t running in the Zegama-Aizkorri this year, that’s for sure (unless they’ve employed him to clear the route of boulders) but I thought he epitimizes the spirit of Basque sport in its habitually rural context, be it stone lifting, ram fighting, rowing or mountain running. Brute force tinged with poetry.

Video of Basque sports accompanied by tree trunk music here.

Interesting article from run-the-planet here (note: Tarahumara indians are mentioned).

Kumuxumusu link here (very nice t-shirts)