The Sport You Won’t Believe is Real: Extreme Ironing

What’s more extreme than trekking through harsh wilderness, fighting the elements and navigating mountains? Doing all of that plus ironing a shirt at the end.

Yes, this is the world of extreme ironing, a sartorial sport/performance art which has been described by the Extreme Ironing Bureau as “the latest danger sport that combines the thrills of an extreme outdoor activity with the satisfaction of a well-pressed shirt.”

Legend has it the sport was invented by Phil Shaw of Leicester, England, who had grown tired of traditional ironing and wanted something with a bit more of an adrenaline rush. He liked the idea of adding rock climbing into the mix, and, in 1999, he set out on an extreme ironing tour across the United States, South Africa and the South Pacific. The trip led to the formation of Extreme Ironing International. The sport grew in popularity for its peculiar objective and questionable status as a “sport,” and achieved international recognition with Channel 4’s documentary, Extreme Ironing: Pressing for Victory which documented the 1^ST Extreme Ironing World Championships, as well as the team Urban Housework, who was attempting to establish the spin-off sport, extreme vacuum-cleaning.

Two Extreme Ironers on their way up Snowdon Mountain, Wales © Nick Holland | Flickr

By the late 2000s, extreme ironing had garnered fans all over the world, with climbers, divers, surfers, bungee jumpers and more participating in the sport in locations ranging from the middle of London’s M1 motorway to South Dakota’s Mount Rushmore to Matt Lauer pressing shirts all over New York City for NBC’s TODAY show. Extreme ironing has even inspired other alternative sports like extreme cello playing.