Quidditch gets real

These are quidditch players. The game, which is from the Harry Potter books, is now played as a sport in 40 countries.

In the story, players fly on broomsticks. But in the real sport, players run with them between their legs. Tiphaine Pasquereau says it adds a challenge.

Tiphaine Pasquereau: "It's not just to say we do like Harry Potter, we pretend to fly or whatever. It really has a role because it serves as a handicap. We have to run while keeping it between our legs, so it forces us to handle the balls often with one hand. They are volleyballs, so they are quite big in diameter, so it is not necessarily easy."

Quidditch teams still use words from the story, like Golden Snitch. In the book, this is a gold ball which flies. In the sport, a runner is dressed in yellow and a sock with a tennis ball is placed in their shorts.

The sport's one of the only ones which has male and female team members. It also requires skills from many other sports. Team captain Paul Bonnet really loves this about the sport.

Paul Bonnet:"We often find players who have done different sports before: rugby, basketball, volleyball, football. And in fact, everyone manages to fit in because there's huge diversity in the game, in what we have to do, in our roles. And so, everyone finds their place a little bit. It mixes several sports and obviously we have a good diversity of people, different physiques."

National quidditch federations try to organise international competitions. They want it to become a serious sport. But many people still think it's just for Harry Potter fans. Tess Harmand disagrees.

Tess Harmand: "It's our goal as a federation to show that we really are a serious sport, that we organise competitions like any other sport, and that we put the same intensity, the same passion as any other individual or team sport. But there are still people who are more attracted to the really geeky side, which is around the universe and everything." Weniger anzeigen