FERRET RACING. The Wall Street Journal has good coverage of minor sports, and I am drawn to descriptions of the sports which have historical interest or arise from people’s activities. Frances Robinson had an article in the Jorunal (March 5) about ferret racing, and the article appealed to me on both counts. First, the name of the English village which gives the dateline for the story is a romantic name: “Appletreewick”, pronounced in the village as “Aptrick”. And the ferret racetrack was built “using 16th-century techniques”. And the ferrets are part of the life of the village. One of the competitors had killed four or five chickens in the village before being captured.
A ferret racetrack features drainpipes because ferrets love running through pipes.In the United States, “ferrets have been used to haul electric lines through gas pipes being laid across deserts.”
Although Frances Robinson writes about a ferret race at a village pub, she points out that ferret racing has taken place at a country show at Highclere Castle (the home of Downton Abbey).
And then, of course, there’s Women’s International Darts.