Wok racing is a sport developed by the German TV host and entertainer Stefan Raab in which modified

wok A wok (; Pinyin: ; Cantonese ) is a deep round-bottomed cooking pan from China. It is believed to be derived from the South Asian karahi. It is common in China and similar pans are found in parts of East, South and Southeast Asia, as well as ...

s are used to make timed runs down an Olympic

bobsleigh Bobsleigh or bobsled is a team winter sport that involves making timed runs down narrow, twisting, banked, iced tracks in a gravity-powered sleigh. International bobsleigh competitions are governed by the International Bobsleigh and Skeleton Feder ...

track. There are competitions for and , the latter using four woks per sled.

History

Wok racing was inspired by a bet in the German TV show '' Wetten, dass..?''. In November 2003, the ''First official Wok World Championship'' was broadcast from Winterberg. The immediate success led to the second world championship in Innsbruck on March 4, 2004. Participants are mostly b-list celebrities like musical artists, actors, and TV hosts, but there are also known athletes that have ongoing professional careers in winter sports, like three-time Olympic luge champion

Georg Hackl Georg Hackl (often named: Hackl Schorsch, ; born 9 September 1966) is a German former luger who was three time Olympic and World Champion. He is known affectionately as ''Hackl-Schorsch'' or as the ''Speeding Weißwurst'' a reference to what he ...

and the

Jamaican Bobsled Team The Jamaica national bobsleigh team represents Jamaica in international bobsleighing competitions. The men's team debut in the 1988 Winter Olympic Games four-man bobsleigh in Calgary, Alberta, was received as underdogs in a cold weather sport ...

. The third championship took place again in Winterberg on March 5, 2005. In contrast to the previous championships, there were two runs in which all contesters participated. The times of both runs were added. As a further innovation a qualifying round was created in which the participants had to jump from a trickski-jump with woks to determine the starting order. Further the sport event was professionalized.

Equipment

The typical racing woks are the ordinary round-bottomed Chinese pans, usually directly imported from China. The only modifications are that the bottom is reinforced with an epoxy filling and the edges of the wok are coated with

polyurethane Polyurethane (; often abbreviated PUR and PU) refers to a class of polymers composed of organic units joined by carbamate (urethane) links. In contrast to other common polymers such as polyethylene and polystyrene, polyurethane is produced from ...

foam to avoid injuries. Four-person woksleds consist of two pairs of woks, each of them is held together by a rounded frame. The two pairs are connected by a coupling. Due to the rather risky nature of the sport the participants wear heavy protective gear, usually similar to

ice hockey equipment In ice hockey, players use specialized equipment both to facilitate the play of the game and for protection as this is a sport where injuries are common, therefore, all players are encouraged to protect their bodies from bruises and severe fractu ...

. To further reduce

friction Friction is the force resisting the relative motion of solid surfaces, fluid layers, and material elements sliding against each other. There are several types of friction: *Dry friction is a force that opposes the relative lateral motion of ...

and the risk of injuries, the athletes wear ladles under their feet. To improve performance, the undersides of the woks are often heated with a

blowlamp A blowtorch, also referred to as a blowlamp, is an ambient air fuel-burning gas lamp used for applying flame and heat to various applications, usually metalworking. Early blowtorches used liquid fuel, carried in a refillable reservoir atta ...

before the race.

Advertising controversy

Public wok racing is only practiced once a year at The "World Wok Racing Championships" (German: Wok-WM, , lit. Wok Worldcup) which is aired as special edition of Raab's show ''

TV total ''TV total'' is a German late-night television comedy talk show which originally aired from 8 March 1999 to 16 December 2015 on ProSieben, hosted, created and produced by entertainer Stefan Raab. Following a six-year hiatus, it was revived on ...

'' on the German television channel ProSieben. The network used to declare these broadcasts as sporting events. Under German law that allowed the network to treat the massive corporate sponsorship of the event as incidental advertising which didn't count against Germany's strict rules regarding time limits for TV commercials. After a Berlin court ruling in 2009, however, the shows have to be labeled as an infomercial, since – unlike a regular sporting event – the races are explicitly staged for the TV broadcast, and there is strong evidence that the profits of the event sponsorship directly benefit the network.

World Wok Racing Championships

Venues

* November 6, 2003: Winterberg * March 4, 2004: Innsbruck * March 5, 2005: Winterberg * March 11, 2006: Innsbruck * March 9, 2007: Innsbruck * March 8, 2008: Altenberg * March 7, 2009: Winterberg * March 19, 2010: Oberhof * March 12, 2011: Innsbruck * March 10, 2012:

Königssee The Königssee is a natural lake in the extreme southeast Berchtesgadener Land district of the German state of Bavaria, near the Austrian border. Most of the lake is within the Berchtesgaden National Park. Description Situated within the Berch ...

* March 2, 2013: Oberhof * March 8, 2014: Königssee * March 14, 2015: Innsbruck * November 12, 2022: Winterberg

Ranking

One-person Wok

Four-person Wok

Records

Speed records

Course Records

References

* * {{refend Racing vehicles Racing Sledding Winter sports Team sports Human-powered vehicles Sports originating in Germany German inventions 2003 introductions 2003 establishments in Germany