Strange Silverware Selections – Five of the World’s Weirdest Sports Trophies
All athletes dream of winning glittering Sports Trophies but some titles come complete with very odd awards. Here are five of the weirdest trophies in sport.
- Tennis – The Dubai Duty Free Tennis Championships’ Men’s Singles Trophy
When Andy Murray won the men’s singles competition at the Dubai Duty Free Tennis Championship earlier this month, not only did he boost his bank balance by $487, 245 (approximately £389,990), he also received one of the sport’s most ostentatious trophies.
Made from solid silver, this well-known sports trophy is shaped like a ship, complete with a billowing sail engraved with the sponsors’ logo. The ship stands on a plinth, which features a plate emblazoned with previous winners’ names.
While it’s certainly a weird trophy, however, it’s nowhere near as strange as the award received by the runner-up. This year, it was Fernando Verdasco who received the tournament’s intriguing ornamental horn.
- Motorsports – The 2014 Formula 1 British Grand Prix Trophy
When Lewis Hamilton won the British Grand Prix at Silverstone in 2014, he was presented with a new award, the Santander Trophy. Twelve months later, he was still complaining about the trophy, which featured red tendrils that curved to form a flame shape.
According to Hamilton, the contemporary trophy, which was designed by a university student as part of a competition organised by Santander, was no substitute for the gold cup previously awarded to the race’s winners.
“They gave me this plastic thing and I’m like: “This is not the trophy”. It was like a GP2 trophy not the Formula One trophy. The gold one is really special,” he told the Daily Mail.
Clearly, the three-time Formula 1 World Champion hadn’t thought about the benefits that plastic sports trophies offer. Lightweight, so they are simple to raise aloft, they’re also exceptionally easy to care for.
- Cycling – The Paris-Roubaix Trophy
Cycling is known for having some of the weirdest trophies in sport. The winner of the 2017 Paris-Roubaix road race, which takes place on 9 April, for example, will receive a slab of granite on a stone plinth. This strange trophy is also, however, a highly coveted and meaningful one.
The granite is, in fact, a cobblestone; a stone of the same type that feature on the course’s famous cobbled lanes. According to Cycling Weekly, the trophies are crafted by Slosse Marbrerie, a local stonemasonry company, using old cobbles recovered from fields nearby. These cobbles ended up on the farmland when the area was bombed in World War I.
- Cricket – The Warne–Muralitharan Trophy
Crafted in the run-up to Australia’s two-Test cricket series against Sri Lanka in November 2007, the Warne-Muralitharan Trophy was designed to celebrate 25 years of Test matches between the two nations.
This contemporary sports trophy is named after Shane Warne (Australia) and Muttiah Muralitharan (Sri Lanka); two of the most successful bowlers in Test cricket. The designers of this weird trophy immortalised the cricketing pair by incorporating casts of each man’s right hand clasping a cricket ball bowled to him during his professional career.
- Golf – LPGA Longs Drugs Challenge
This women’s golfing tournament is now a thing of the past, but no list of the weirdest trophies in sport would be complete without mention of the trophy awarded to the winner of its 2002 edition.
Initially, this glittering crystal golf award might not appear to be a strange trophy at all. Stylish and contemporary, it features a golf ball on top of what looks like the crest of a wave, and has a practical built-in base. However, when its recipient, Cristie Kerr, turned it onto its side and kissed it, she gave photographers the perfect snigger-inducing shot.
It’s certainly been good publicity for Cristie and the tournament’s sponsors, however – fifteen years later and the photo still regularly appears in the media.
Which sports trophy do you think is the strangest? Have you ever won a weird trophy? We’d love to know, so leave a comment below.