HARVEYSBURG, Ohio (AP) — On a sunny, early fall Saturday in
Harveysburg, about 45 miles northeast of Cincinnati, a crowd of
some 2,000 people has gathered around a fenced-in dirt area of the
30-acre Ohio Renaissance Festival grounds.

Gnawing on 1-pound roasted turkey legs or drinking from plastic
cups, they gaze up at two large men sitting on even larger draft
horses, facing each other from opposite ends of a 180-foot-long
stretch. Each is wearing full armor and wielding an 11-foot lance
made of solid Douglas fir.

“Do you want to see two grown men hit each other with big
sticks?” shouts Jason Armstrong, the armored knight serving as
emcee for the show, from atop his horse.

The crowd roars approval.

Thus begins the full-armored, full-contact, unstaged sport of
jousting, whose top players are betting that many more people are
interested in watching grown men (and some women) hit each other
with big sticks.

They believe that jousting is poised to become the next big
extreme sport, capable of attracting sponsors and television
coverage not unlike mixed martial arts, thanks in part to a wave of
interest created by a July New York Times Magazine article.

Harveysburg could be the center of it all, thanks to Shane
Adams. The 40-year-old Canadian is the reigning international
jousting champion and a driving force behind the movement to launch
jousting to national prominence. He now makes his home in
Harveysburg.

The road to Harveysburg began in Acton, Ontario, a small town
about an hour west of Toronto. Adams grew up on a horse farm there,
dreaming of becoming a knight ever since he first watched a Robin
Hood movie with his grandmother.

He realized his dream could become a reality when, at 16, he
visited the Medieval Times dinner theater in Orlando. At 23, he
left his full-time construction job when he was hired as a knight
at Medieval Times in Toronto, in part because he looked the part:
He stands 6-feet-4, has a long beard and a mane of wavy red hair
almost as long as his horse’s. But the novelty of being a knight
wore off.

“After three years, I finally came to the realization that I
wasn’t really living my childhood dream,” he says. “Instead of
being a knight in shining armor, I was a knight in shining
polyester and tinsel.”

So Adams left Medieval Times to create his own Medieval-themed
traveling road show, acquiring some light draft horses and a
150-pound suit of armor to stage choreographed jousts.

In 1997, a promoter contacted him to represent Canada in the
first international jousting championships at the Longs Peak
Scottish-Irish Highlands Festival in Estes Park, Colo., which this
year offered a $50,000 purse. Adams has been the grand champion
there four years running.

He had never competed in an un-choreographed joust, but Adams
left Estes Park with four broken ribs, a broken hand, a broken
wrist and the world championship belt. He says the English team
told him they believed he had been “reincarnated” from a previous
life as a medieval jouster.

“They realized that it wasn’t just a fluke, that I had some
innate natural ability to be able to hit somebody with a stick,” he
says. “Hello, I’m Canadian! That’s all we got to hit people
with.”

Of course, there’s much more to full-contact jousting than
hitting somebody with a stick. Jousters must be skilled equestrians
with a keen sense of aim and timing and unafraid to hit and be hit
at 20 to 25 miles per hour.

Assessed by a panel of judges as they make four passes, jousters
receive one point for a strike to a metal chest plate called a
grand guard; five points for a broken lance, and 10 points for the
ultimate goal: Unhorsing an opponent.

“This is jousting. You’re going to get hurt. It’s just a matter
of when and how bad,” says Adams, whose has jousted at various
times with a fractured scapula, hand and thumb bone.

As for medical treatment and insurance: “I’m Canadian. I go
across the border every six months,” Adams says.

Adams left Canada in 2005 to promote full-contact jousting in
the U.S., settling in Harveysburg after falling in love with the
Ohio Renaissance Festival, one of the five largest in the country.
He and his wife, Ashli, whom he met when she was managing the
famous Stanley Hotel in Colorado, married there three years ago and
now have a 2-year-old daughter, Paige.

He says he likes that his new Ohio home is just four hours from
the border and centrally located to other Renaissance festivals. He
and his 20-member troupe, the Knights of Valour, travel to about 20
other fairs every year with their horses; Adams says he has rescued
most of his from slaughterhouses or farms.

The Knights of Valour is one of about four troupes of about 100
worldwide that do full-contact jousting, Adams says. Most others
use lances tipped with balsa wood to lessen the impact of the
hits.

People flock to their jousts for the same reason they go to
NASCAR events in the hopes of seeing crashes, or hockey games in
the hopes of seeing fights, Adams says. Knights in shining armor
atop beautiful steeds provide another element of attraction, he
says.

“It doesn’t matter if you’re a 5-year-old boy or an 80-year-old
man, you’ve thought about being a knight someday, or being that
prince,” he says.

“It’s the same for girls. What damsel out there doesn’t want to
get rescued by a knight in shining armor? Charlie rescues one every
weekend,” he continues, as fellow jouster Charlie Andrews walks
into the knight’s encampment, essentially a shed where the knights
store their gear and relax between shows.

“Every show, what are you talking about?” cracks Andrews, a
42-year-old former Navy SEAL and veteran of Operation Desert Storm
and Operation Restore Hope in Somalia who wears his hair in a
short, red-tipped Mohawk.

A Utah native who jousts with a full-contact troupe called the
Knights of Mayhem, Andrews is also one of the top competitive
jousters today. He was the reserve grand champion in Estes Park
this year.

“Right now, the dominating force in the sport are guys like
Charlie and I, who are basically 40-year-old men trapped in
25-year-old Adonis bodies,” Adams says matter-of-factly.

Andrews invites a visitor to feel his biceps as proof.

“Superman wears Charlie pajamas,” he whispers.

But the sport of the Middle Ages might not always be dominated
by middle-aged men. This summer, Adams was contacted by equestrian
college officials who wanted to know if he could train instructors
so they could create intercollegiate competitive jousting
teams.

“You’ve got high school rodeos,” Adams says. “Why can’t you have
high school jousting?”

Evidence of jousting’s growing appeal is at the Renaissance
festival last weekend. She’s 24-year-old Jessica Post of Radnor, a
town of about 200 people 35 miles north of Columbus, and she’s been
taking lessons from Adams for the past year, ever since she saw a
demonstration at the 2009 Ohio Equine Affaire in Columbus. It was
her third weekend jousting in front of a crowd.

“I love the partnership you have with the horse. I love going up
against someone at 5,000 psi (pounds per square inch), the
adrenaline that goes through you,” says the tall, soft-spoken Post,
who’s been horseback riding since she was 5 and also has experience
in full-contact sparring. “It’s just fun.”

Jousting lessons aren’t cheap. Adams charges around $100 an
hour, but he also pays jousters $500 for a weekend that typically
includes just a few hours performing in front of a crowd.

Post says she’s able to afford lessons because she still lives
at home and works full time, fortuitously, at an insurance company.
With no serious injuries yet, she wants to devote as much time as
possible to her hobby.

“This has become my passion, so I hope there’s a future in it,”
she says.

Adams is certain that full-contact jousting has a future. After
the New York Times Magazine article appeared online, he began
fielding phone calls from production companies and television
network presidents.

Adams’ ultimate goal: To bring jousting back to its 13th and
14th century glory, so that it’s widely recognized as a
professional, elite, extreme equestrian sport.

“It may not be able to beat out football, but jousting’s pretty
damn exciting,” he says. “All you have to do is come out and see
it.”

___

Information from: The Cincinnati Enquirer,
http://www.enquirer.com