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GOSTRA

RACING FOR THE PENNANT

This is definitely one race where your ownly opponent is yourself. Every year, on the afternoon of the last Sunday in August, brave men and women from all over Malta compete in the traditional game of "gostra", trying to run all the way to the top of a long very well greased pole and snatch one of four pennants - each placed farther up the greased pole. In the picture above, the pole is bouncing so severely under the man's weight that a glob of grease is being knocked off the end of the pole.

<sup>The lower part is ungreased and easy...

.... but then comes "the slippery slope".</sup>

Each of the three flags on a gostra pole has a religious meaning - the blue and white flag of the Madonna, the yellow and white Vatican standard and the Belgian tricolor representing the ancestral homeland of St. Julian – and they are all associated with a special prize for whoever manages to reach them.

^{Weekend Sports Businessman doesn't quite make it}

Dating back to the Middle Ages, the game of gostra was practiced all through the festive summer months in various locations around the islands of Malta and Gozo. A wooden pole measuring about 10 meters (33 feet) long was mounted on a coal barge and towed to harbor towns and seaside villages around the Maltese coast, where it was smeared with grease and animal fat. Brave local men, women and children would try to run up the pole and reach one of the symbolic flags at the top, pull it out of its hole, and hold on to it all the way into the water, below.

^{Bikini Babe does a graceful pirouette and falls short.}

Today, the game is only held in the towns of Msida (shown here) and Spinola Bay, in honor of St. Joseph and St. Julian.

^{Weekend Sports Businessman tries again. Ooh! One more inch and he would have had it.}

Only the top half is covered in grease. There is no way to walk or even shimmy up the whole length, so contestants run as hard as hard as they can up the ungreased part, hoping that the inertia will give them a better chance of making it out to the pennants before they fall unavoidably into the sea, below.

^{Skinny Speedo Guy makes it with ease.}

^{Weekend Sports Businessman doesn't give up. A successful backhanded grab!}

^{Big Tatoo Dude misses the next one by inches (lots of inches).}

^{Skinny Speedo Guy gets the third flag with a little holding-on ploy.}

^{And the winner is..Skinny Speedo Guy!!! (and the crowd goes wild)}

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