Every year the magazine Mental Floss puts out a Top Ten issue.
This year the Top Ten list that caught our attention is entitled, "10 Sports Heroes You Won’t Find On Wheaties Boxes."
The magazine editors write:
"Shame on Wheaties for ignoring the heroes of elephant polo, sumo wrestling, and bullfighting! At our breakfast of champions, they’re always at the head of the table."
Here are the first two sports hero's in this very interesting list:
1. Sumo Wrestling: Akebono Taro
The
only slim thing about sumo wrestling is the chance of becoming a
yokozuna, or grand champion. Throughout the centuries, only 69 men have
done it. Before Hawaii’s Chad Rowan stomped into the ring, no foreigner
had ever held the honor. Of course, improbable things can happen when
you stand 6’8” and weigh more than 500 lbs.—gigantic even by sumo
standards. After abandoning a college basketball scholarship due to arguments with his coaches, Rowan threw himself into sumo.
In 1988, he went to Japan with only a single set of clothes and a
limited knowledge of Japanese. But Rowan wasn’t there to chitchat.
Within a year, the quick study had learned how to use his towering
height to make devastating thrusts at opponents’ throats. That March,
he made his professional debut as Akebono—“dawn” in Japanese—an ironic
moniker for a man who could block out the sun.
As Rowan’s victories piled up and his Japanese improved, he won more and more fans. His jovial demeanor didn’t hurt, either. In January 1993, Akebono was promoted to yokozuna—a title he held until retirement. By the time he was ready to hang up his belt in 2001, he’d racked up 566 wins and 11 division championships.
2. Elephant Polo: Kimberly Zenz
When
Kimberly Zenz, an experienced horse polo player, discovered elephant
polo on the Internet, she knew she’d found her destiny. Intrigued by
the prospect of simultaneously riding an elephant and wielding an
oversize mallet, Zenz posted an ad on Craigslist looking for teammates
in Washington, D.C. Amazingly, people responded.
Zenz’s four-person team, the Capital Pachyderms, didn’t have real elephants with which to practice. Luckily, that didn’t matter much. Four elephants—along with four experienced elephant drivers—are provided to each team before a tournament. Knowing that her squad could concentrate more on whacking the ball than handling the elephants (you leave that to the drivers), Kimberly and crew trained on top of old swing sets to approximate the pachyderms’ height.
As one might expect, there wasn’t quite enough jungle in their jungle gyms. The team’s training efforts were no substitute for experience, and the Capital Pachyderms finished second to last in Thailand’s 2006 King’s Cup Elephant Polo Championship. Undeterred, Zenz and her team kept practicing. In 2007, they placed second in a competition in Sri Lanka and fifth in the World Elephant Polo Championships in Nepal. Both victories have earned them bragging rights as “America’s No. 1 elephant polo team.”
You'll find the rest of their Top Ten List HERE.