More bangs for your buck

Nursing his cuts and bruises, some livid burn marks and what turned out to be a bruised kidney, he wandered aloud whether the trial by fire was worth it.

"It's like going 10 rounds with an armored division," visiting Canadian teacher Mike Doolan told the Taipei Times just over a month ago in Yenshui. "They say, `one hit and you're hooked,' but the game's too extreme, man."

Doolan had taken part in what could turn out to be the world's first ever organized "firerunning" competition and the pain of his injuries was only somewhat numbed by the adrenaline rush of what he had just done.

Every year for over a century the small Tainan County town in the middle of Taiwan has been running a fireworks festival that re-enacts a 19th century ritual to exorcise demons that were thought at the time to cause cholera. The event takes place 15 days after the start of each Lunar New Year.

Olympic trials

Now it is a huge event, drawing tens of thousands of people from around the world and rules for firerunning, the sport, are hurriedly being drawn up so that it can be premiered at the 2008 Summer Games in Beijing as a future Olympic event.

Two Taiwanese men are said to be responsible for this repackaging of a religious festival and at a press conference in Taipei last week they unveiled their plans to make firerunning a mainstream sport.

Wen Mei-ting (溫美婷) is little known outside Yenshui, where he has become a local hero, but he organized the firerunning competitions that were held on the fringes of the festival in Yenshui this year.

The 24-year-old unemployed graduate has also developed a set of rules for the game, which he told the media last week "is the blueprint of a new sport, made in Taiwan." He calls it penhuo (奔火), or firerunning.

Basically, he has adapted the ancient game of "dodgeball" -- called tuopichiu (躲避球) in China -- in which the aim is to avoid a ball thrown by players around the perimeter of a rectangular pitch. The last one hit is the winner.

Firerunning has a semicircular pitch and a cradle of fireworks that delivers a consistent density of fire. A player is out if he or she falls, steps out of bounds, or is killed. Additionally, there are three judges who give points for avoiding fire, movement and flair.

TV friendly

In practice it is a frenetically athletic game which is intensely dramatic and, it is hoped, attractive to viewers.

Wen has been tapped by media mogul Lo Fusheng (羅富牲), who intends to rival the two established players in the Asian market for sports TV, Rupert Murdoch's Star Sports and ESPN.

Originally from Hong Kong, Lo has built a media empire which includes two TV stations in Taiwan -- one of them a sports channel. He has bought up a basketball and several baseball teams in Taiwan, as well as having a share of the action in several golf courses.

But traditional sports have been losing viewers and there has been pressure to develop sports that appeal to a younger market, like ESPN and its X-Games, or National Geographic's Action Asia Challenge and any other number of alternative "sports" like basejumping, paintball or synchronized swimming.

But firerunning will be "the most dangerous sport on the planet," according to a public relations spokeswoman for Lo at the press conference last week

Real players

It is Lo's intention to provide World Wrestling Federation-style coverage, develop a base of athletes through cash prizes, TV exposure and sponsorship, then develop an association for the sport and lobby for inclusion in the Olympics, Lo's spokeswoman said.