Logrolling (sport)
Water sport
Log rolling, sometimes called birling, is a sparring sport involving two competitors, each standing on one end of a free-floating log in a body of water. The two battle to dislodge each other from the log while keeping their own footing on it by spinning and kicking it and various other means. In the United States, an official organized logrolling competition is called a roleo.
In the related sport of boom running, competitors each run an adjacent boom, or coupled line, of floating logs in both directions, vying to finish first without falling into the water.
01Log sizes
There are four different sizes of logs currently used in competitions, though there are many other custom sizes used in training. Each log size has a unique number and color associated with it. In the United States, the dimensions of the logs are standardized by the United States Log Rolling Association (USLRA), while CAN-LOG (Canadian Logger Sports Association) standardizes the sizes in Canada.
USLRA professional men sizes
USLRA professional women sizes
USLRA amateur sizes
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CAN-LOG sizes
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02United States Logrolling Association
The US Logrolling Association (USLRA) is the national governing body of the sports of log rolling and boom running. It is the first national member of the International Logrolling Association (ILRA). The Association is responsible for overseeing rules, regulations, and rankings, and also works to grow and promote the sports of logrolling and boom running in the United States.
03CAN-LOG
Can-Log was established in the late 1960s to promote the sport of logrolling in Canada, set rules and regulations, and allow for the allocation of Canadian Championship events to the participating competitions.
04Rules
The match begins when the whistle is blown or "Time in" is called by the head judge and continues until a fall occurs or the time limit expires (The judge may recall a quick whistle if they feel that the rollers did not have equal control.). The first athlete to lose contact with the log with both feet and fall off the log loses the fall. The last athlete to lose contact with the log wins the fall. For all amateur and professional divisions, matches consist of three out of five falls.
Tournaments can either run with a round-robin format (each athlete competes in a match against everyone in their division once) or double elimination bracket (a consolation bracket system in which rollers move higher in the competition each time they win a match or fall lower in the competition each time they lose a match).
05Notable Competitors
J. R. Salzman is a former Men’s Professional logroller. In 2006, he suffered a serious limb injury while deployed in the Iraq War, returning to competition with a prosthetic arm in 2009.
Judy Scheer-Hoeschler, a retired seven-time Women’s Professional world champion, is credited as the founder of many of the world's most successful logrolling programs.
Sources and credits
This article is adapted from the Wikipedia article “Logrolling (sport)”, written by its contributors and licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. Fathomly has changed the layout, removed citation markers, navigation and maintenance notices, and adjusted punctuation. This adapted version is shared under the same license. For references, see the original article.
Images, from Wikimedia Commons:
- Logrolling 2023.jpg by Texture39, CC0
- A LOG-ROLLING CONTESTANT STRETCHES FOR BALANCE DURING AN OLD FASHIONED GAMES CONTEST HELD AT UNICOI STATE PARK OVER... - NARA - 557773.jpg by Al Stephenson, Public domain
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