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Roman legions in New York City on a cold Winter morning?  Not quite.  Competitors in the annual shopping cart race known as the Idiotarod?  Could be!  This annual cart fest – this year taking place on 31 January – annually brings together some of the less sane elements of the city’s denizens to compete in a frenzy of rolling, running and pure, blissful sabotage.

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The Iditorad, in Alaska is famous for its grueling length, the almighty cold and the tenacity and stubbornness against all odds of it competitors.  The same might be said of its extremely distant cousin, the Idiotarod, now in its sixth year in the heart of New York City.  Then again, maybe not.

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A few differences immediately spring to mind.  There are no dogs or sleds.  Rather there are people and, well, shopping carts.  Instead of the vast Alaskan wilderness there are (n this occasion at least) the not so mean streets of NYC.  Instead of hardened and experienced racers there are a motley bunch of people determined not so much to get from one end of a wind swept state to another, but to wind through the streets in a state.

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And what a state!  Even Steampunk gets to sidle in somewhere.  Don’t think that there are no rules to melee of humanity, however, for there are many.  Perhaps the cruelest of this particular contest is that any competitor found wearing spandex is peremptorily disqualified.  A difficult and cruel rule in this city that was built on the stuff; however there are some aesthetic principles that, whatever the cause, must be upheld.  This said, the team above with their natty little nipple covers look suspiciously adorned in the L material.

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The carts themselves may be modified in any way the imagination, unleashed, can come up with.  Although the original must be ‘cartus intactus’, modifications of any nature can be made upon it.  Which gives scope. Lots of scope.

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The rules of the race itself are rigorous.  A team may have five racers and one cart.  That is it.  However, multiple teams can affiliate themselves with each other and can use extra, cartless people – perhaps so the unpopular one in the office doesn’t feel left out.  Perhaps for other function, who can say?  They could be seen in much in the same way, one supposes, that armies of the past had certain ladies who called themselves camp followers (and they weren’t referring to Manilow or Liberace) and who did for the chaps what their wives were unable. Swallow hard and screw your eyes and the centuries almost roll away before you.

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Like the Iditorad in Alaska, there are checkpoints along the way.  In this race, the competitors must get to each check point in order to have a chance of winning but the order in which they do it and the route that they take may be entirely of their own invention.  The racers must be touching (or connected to) the cart at all times throughout the race, except at the checkpoints where, it could be imagined, the call of nature may be answered.  The thought of a shopping cart and five of these folk in a public convenience does put some strange images in the head.

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Mush!  Like their Alaskan counterpart, the cart acts as the sled and four of the racers must effectively do it doggy style – or get husky – or some other vaguely innuendo ridden description which means they must be at the front of the cart.  The fifth is the musher.  The rules say nothing about whips.  Optional, perhaps.

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The winners this year?  Most unusually, the prize for ‘best in show’ was awarded to two teams – a tie!  Team Romulus and Team Remus jointly pranced away with the prize for their almost five hundred pound chariots, their Gladiator reminiscent entry music, marching chants and fabulous bribes to the judges.

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So, another year another Idiotarod.  With the quality of competitors, their carts and their high jinks this year being at an all time high (or low, depending on how you look at it) 2010 must see the bar simultaneously pushed ever upwards and downwards in this superb example of urban extreme silliness.

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