Our Blog - New Sports

This is a slightly different blog, as it actually combines a bunch of information from over multiple months. This is my "new sports" blog. Since moving to Toulouse almost a year ago, we've had the opportunity to see several "new" sports for us. We've watched multiple sports, especially living in "college sports"-land in the Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill area (or said another way ... the State-Duke-Carolina area). We watched the marathon when we were in Paris (and here), a Formula 1 race in Shanghai, and multiple golf tournaments around the world. Here, we've added 4 new sports to the list.

Toulouse actually has lots of different professional sports than we are used to. For example, int he US, there are a lot more college sports that you go to watch. For professional sports, it is a bit more limited (basketball, football, soccer, baseball). The most recent new sport that we watched was Men's Handball. We actually found out that one of our neighbors is a Danish professional handball player for the Toulouse team, and so we had wanted to see a handball match anyway this year. Then last month when we donated blood, they were giving away sets of tickets to several different sports, and so we were able to see a match for free (free is always good!). We knew nothing about handball before we got the tickets. And, unfortunately, even after reading wikipedia and watching a match, I can't say we know much more about it.

The professional team, called FENIX Toulouse Handball, was originally founded in 1964 although the FENIX name started in 2011. They play in the sports arena which is just 2 blocks or so from the apartment, so it is pretty convenient. Here I grabbed a couple pictures before the match. First while practicing, and then as they did the announcement of each of the team members between Toulouse and their opponents, Massy (up near Orly airport at Paris). Each of the team members came in with a small child, and then at the end, they all threw handball balls into the stands (we didn't get one). One picture during the game as well as a picture of the mascot.

A few weeks ago, we also were at the same sports arena to watch a professional Volleyball match. In this case, the team is called the Spacer's. We understood volleyball a bit more than handball, although professional volleyball is a bit different than what we played in high school! We were trying to read up on it, especially how they rotated since they had certain people who never came out of the back row and so they would substitute out when they would rotate to the front and then rotate back into the back row again.

Another new one ... Wheelchair Basketball. This is played at the same area but instead of the "round" arena, it was at a smaller arena just behind the other arena. At least this time, we thought we did actually understand the rules and it was interesting to see how agile these guys were within wheel chairs. It was also interesting for us that there were actually different types of wheelchairs and it sounds like they are based on what "position" you play .... for example the taller guys seemed to be more like "centers" and they would have taller chairs. It sounded like, from reading, that the shorter the chair, the lower the center of gravity, and the more agile the guys would be.

And lastly, this one goes back a bit of time to when we first got here and we got free tickets to see a Rugby match. We kept trying to understand these rules also (and I guess we were trying to understand the rules based on it being a bit like football) and we still don't fully understand. This is one type of rugby and unfortunately, all of our rugby friends understand the rules of the OTHER type of rugby. But it was interesting.

So far, it has been fun going to these various events and watching sports that we really hadn't see before. There are obviously others ... Stade Toulousain is is a Rugby Union club here and is the most successful in Europe, so we definitely have to try that. Soccer is big here as well, and in the South of France, there is even professional Petanque.