Vintage By Hemingway

THE CHAP OLYMPIAD 

29th-31st July 1-3pm daily
Jubilee Gardens

The Chap Olympiad has been Britain’s most eccentric sporting event since 2005. It is a sporting contest for the unathletic, the unfit and the exceptionally well-dressed. Individual events test essential Chappish skills such as the ability to wield an umbrella while riding a bicycle, accurately toss a trilby on to a hat stand and cause a lady to swoon through caddish behaviour. Points are awarded for panache, archly-raised eyebrows and maintaining an immaculate crease in one’s trousers. Breaking a sweat, grunting or vulgar displays of victorious pride are penalised. Any contestant yielding a negative result in tests for alcohol content in the blood will be immediately disqualified.

The Chap Olympiad is held annually in London, attracting hundreds of spectators and athletes, with the 2010 Olympiad breaking the record at 1,500 people. All the guests come in period dress, ranging from Victorian explorers to flappers to Second World War RAF pilots. Many competitors come well-prepared, with home made gadgets and tricks up their sleeves to win at specific events. Cheating and skulduggery are encouraged, as long as they are carried out with excessive courtesy, particularly towards the ladies.

The contestants are all drawn from the audience, who will find it easy to pick up the rules of each contest, and even easier if they’ve had a tumbler or two of Pimm’s or gin and tonic

The events for the 2011 Chap Olympiad were:

1. Butler Baiting: a circle of chaps is attended to by a butler. They try to bait him by making him carry out unreasonable tasks, such as fastening the lower button on their waistcoats and mixing a dry martini with Vodka.
2. Swooning: one for the ladies. A line of chaps faces a line of chapettes, and the chaps have to induce the ladies to swoon through any means possible.
3. Dressage: chapettes mounted on chaps wearing horse masks have to manoeuvre their steeds around a series of unsightly obstacles.
4. Ironing Board Surfing: Contestants mount their ironing boards and are carried over the finishing line by their butlers and housekeepers.
5. Moving Hat Stand: contestants must throw their hats on to a hat stand, which the opposing team is allowed to move randomly.
6. Briefcase Phalanx: two teams of ten chaps face each other in battle lines, dressed for the office and clutching briefcases. They then charge at each other with the aim of stealing the contents of each other’s briefcases.
7. Shouting at Foreigners: contestants must pit their gentlemanly skills against a curmudgeonly, uncooperative foreign shop assistant
8. Umbrella Jousting: two contestants, armed only with brollies and reinforced copies of the Daily Telegraph, must go at one another on bicycles and attempt to knock each other off.

The Chap Olympiad reached the Sunday Times’ Style supplement’s top fifty events for summer 2007.

Some of the press coverage is available to view here:
BBC News
The Telegraph
See below for short film about last years Olympiad 

Background information:
The Chap
The Chap Magazine is a British bi-monthly magazine proposing a return to a dandified way of life, involving tweed, pipe smoking, brogues and finely pressed trousers. The publication celebrates British culture, humour and tradition, proposing a more gentlemanly existence.

The magazine has a bi-monthly worldwide circulation of 10,000. In 2011 Beautiful Books published Am I A Chap? by Gustav Temple, a guide to spotting Chaps in the British Isles.