Weekend Warriors
Will jousting become the next major extreme sport? A motley crew of tough-as-nails knights braces for what may be their biggest hit yet.
Shane Adams eyes the competition from behind his battle-scarred helmet.
© Marc Piscotty
IF RIPPER MOORE WAS LOOKING FOR A PLACE TO HAUNT HIS DREAMS, HE HAS FOUND IT.
Perched atop a 1,750-pound stallion and wearing 100 pounds of jet-black steel armor, he’s galloping toward Shane Adams in a dusty outdoor arena in Estes Park, CO (77 miles from Denver). In seconds, the knights are 40 feet apart, then 30. At 10 feet, they raise their wooden lances and tighten their grips on their shields (which can weigh up to 35 pounds).
Through a veil of dirt and heat, the knights collide. Adams’ lance slams squarely into Moore’s breastplate — a shuddering blow that sounds like a hammer smashing into an aluminum sheet. As shards of broken wood spiral above his head, Moore pitches wildly in his saddle, then goes airborne, stunned, scared and semi-conscious in the blink of an eye.
“It’s like a dream, the way everything slows down,” says Adams, a Canadian and founder of the Knights of Valour troupe — the premier full-contact jousting troupe in North America. “You feel the horse’s muscles ripple under neath you. It’s like you’re in a tunnel. It doesn’t end until you hit. Then things speed up again.”
“This is the original extreme sport,” he adds.
Welcome to the fringe world of true full contact jousting, where adventurers looking for bigger and bolder thrills have turned toward the treacherous.
Ten centuries after the first organized tournament, Adams and Charlie Andrews, founder of the Knights of Mayhem troupe, are on a crusade to transform jousting into a sport capable of attracting throngs of viewers, corporate sponsors, deep-pocketed investors and regular television coverage. The target audience: those raised on the action orgy of full-contact combat sports, cage fights and web-cast backyard brawls. “Nobody does what we do,’” says Andrews, a member of the Chukchansi tribe in California. “This isn’t the sissy jousting they do at Medieval Times dinner shows.’’
Adams and Andrews — whose no-fear attitudes have vaulted them to the top of America’s jousting pack — say the prospect of broken bones, flying bodies, spooked horses and other perils make the sport a perfect fit for the times. “We watch NASCAR to see the wrecks, hockey to see the fights,” Andrews says. “And we watch jousting to see someone get knocked off his horse.”
The sport caught a break last year when a New York Times Magazine story triggered a flurry of inquires from television producers, promoters and ESPN, which filmed the Longs Peak Scottish-Irish Highland Festival in Estes Park last September. And Andrews recently signed a five-episode contract with the National Geographic Channel to film a docu-drama on his troupe.
Watching from the wings in Estes Park was Gabriel Giordano, a San Diego investor and partner in a venture that may take jousting to the next level. He envisions a national tour with video replay boards, rock music and brawny, charismatic heroes. “I think this could be in the Staples Center (in Los Angeles), where you’d get a mix of mixed martial arts fans, pro bull-riding fans and Renaissance fair people who want to see jousting,” he says.
If the jousting tournaments of the 1200s to the 1600s — the sport’s heyday — are any example, today’s competitions could carry a lot of prestige. In the past, marquee knights won acclaim, horses, mercenary employment and large cash awards at big tournaments, which drew as many as 10,000 spectators. “Knights were your professional athletes of the day,” Adams says. “And joust ing was the Super Bowl of the time.”
The sport thrived until the 17th century, when guns made warfare by horse-mounted lancers obsolete, and then the sport all but disappeared. It sprang back to life in the 1980s with the growth of Renaissance fairs and Medieval Times, a nationwide chain of dinner theaters set in “castles” where historical re-enactors stage mock fights. Not long afterward, Renaissance fair jousters started experimenting with non-scripted matches and actual wooden lances.
The rules remain largely unchanged. The first written “jousting rulebook” is usually credited to Frenchman Geoffroi de Pruelli. (In a twist of fate, he was killed in the first-ever jousting tournament in 1066.) A long rope creates lanes, running down the middle of a field (called the list), and points are awarded for hitting the target area on the opponent’s shield or on the metal plate bolted to his chest. But knocking an opponent off his horse — “unhorsing” — is the surest way to score with both judges and fans.
From the start, jousters have stepped on both sides of the line between drama and disaster. In 1599, for example, Henry II of France died when a shard from a broken lance pierced his eye and penetrated his brain. To lessen the impact of the blows, almost all of the 1,000 modern-day jousters use a wooden dowel with a balsa tip, according to Jeremy Oneail, president of the American chapter of the International Jousting Association. Just 30 competitors — almost all of which are North American and have no official governing body — joust with one solid length of wood.
Staying true to history is not without its risks, however: In 2007, Andrews nearly died when a lance bruised his heart and triggered a pulmonary embolism. He was back in the saddle 17 days later. “Charlie is a freak of nature,” says Patrick Lambke, a seven-time world champion jouster who trained Andrews and Adams. (He’s also a Hollywood stuntman and former celebrity bodyguard.)
With a red-tipped mohawk and biceps adorned with tattoos of his spirit animals, Andrews is a fearsome-looking character, a 42-year-old ultimate fighter who carries himself with the bravado of a bull rider (a former hobby). “The next evolution for me was something like this," says the Utah resident. "After the first time you blast someone with a lance, there’s no turning back. It’s like skydiving.”
“And,” he adds with a smile, “I love walking around a Renaissance festival and feeling like a rock star at a concert.”
Jousting’s other front man, Adams — who, at 6-foot-4-inches, 265 pounds with a long, reddish-brown mane — strikes a similarly intimidating profile. His own rock star dreams started early, when he vowed to become a knight after watching The Adventures of Robin Hood (with Errol Flynn) when he was four. At 16, a show at Orlando’s Medieval Times rekindled the dream; seven years later, he joined Toronto’s Medieval Times (while having a full-time construction job during the day). When he realized his shining armor was more like shining polyester, he left to create his own traveling road show.
Today, Adams travels from contest to contest with his Knights of Valour troupe — one of four in the world that compete in full-contact jousting tournaments — with his wife Ashli, whom he met when she worked at the historic Stanley Hotel in Estes Park. They have a 2-year-old daughter, Paige, and typically make it to 20 events a year in a big horse trailer.
Scratching out a living is difficult for heavy-armored jousters after they pay for armor ($5,000 and up), squires, fuel, truck and trailer, feed for the horses, hotel rooms and other equipment. Adams, Andrews and the handful of other full-timers depend heavily on Renaissance fairs, which pay any where from $5,000 to more than $15,000 per weekend for a full-contact jousting troupe (depending on the number of knights).
The tournament in Estes Park — part of a three-day event that also includes light armor competitions and horseback games of skill such as ring spearing and spear throwing — proceeds, as other pairs of knights follow Moore and Adams into combat. Some encounters are indecisive, with no contact made. Others seem certain to produce bone-splitting spills, but there’s only a sharp double click, and lances fall to the dirt. But the prospect of an unhorsing is undoubtedly what has spectators on the edges of their seats.
The crowd is filled with with Renais sance fair regulars, ranchers and young boys, who swing imaginary swords in the air. On one end of the field, Adams pre pares to battle again, hunching forward in anticipation in his saddle, his eyes peering through the narrow slit in his visor. At the other end, Andrews holds his lance aloft.
Then comes the command — a command that turns the dusty rodeo into an arena for fearless warriors. “Charge on!” cries the marshal. Shields are raised, lances are drawn, and hooves kick clouds of dirt in the air. A collective gasp comes from the crowd as the horses pound toward one another…
ROYAL BATTLE
Once a military exercise or a bloody competition to settle grudges between knights, full-contact jousting makes for good olde entertainment. Here's where to check it out:
PENSACOLA, FL
MARCH 5-6
Gulf Coast Renaissance Fair
gcrf.net
OCEAN SPRINGS, MS (20 MILES FROM GULFPORT/BILOXI)
MAY 1-2
Faire Sur La Mer
osrenfaire.com
HARVEYSBURG, OH (25 MILES FROM DOWNTOWN DAYTON)
SEPT. 3 TO OCT. 16
Ohio Renaissance Festival
renfestival.com
ESTES PARK, CO (77 MILES FROM DENVER)
SEPT. 9-11
Longs Peak Scottish-Irish Highland Festival
scotfest.com
LAKEWOOD, NJ (58 MILES FROM NYC)
SEPT. 17-18
Lakewood Renaissance Faire
lakewoodrenfaire.com
Reader Comments
- I sure hope they're not actually jousting in helmets like the one shown, or they're a major, permanent-paralysis-level accident waiting to happen. Just an opinion from an armorsmith. Nice depth on the article, except you didn't mention that that first tournament in France killed a third of the knights in France, before they figured out they needed to make it safer. Also, firearms were not the sole reason for the demise of the armored knight as a force on the battlefield. It was an entire complex of things, including economics, politics, efficient staff weapons, and the rise of the citizen soldier. -Although maturing artillery helped, and I suppose that would qualify as "guns"... (Posted on 09 Jan 2011)
