Poland

Exciting sporting facts

Kylies and boomerangs
The word 'boomerang' puts everyone in mind of a curved piece of wood that is thrown in such a way that it returns - and, of course, it makes us think of Australia.
But there are many different kinds of boomerangs. The hunting boomerang, the so-called Kylie, does not return to the thrower. This is probably a good thing because it could do quite a lot of damage! A Kylie weighed up to one kilogram and could measure up to 1.3 metres in length and 2 centimetres in thickness. Despite this, it could be thrown over a distance of up to 200 metres.
Surprisingly, the oldest known Kylie wasn't discovered in Australia, but in the Oblazowa Cave in the Polish Carpathian Mountains. It dates back an amazing 23,000 years and was made from mammoth tusk! It weighs around 800 grams. Tests with a replica have shown that the Polish Kylie is the real deal - its trajectory made it ideal for hunting. When thrown from the hip, the replica never went any higher than about 1.5 metres and would almost certainly have hit an animal.
Despite the amazing find in Poland, Australia is still regarded as the home of the boomerang because it was there that boomerangs were most widely used and developed. Native Australians used the lighter returning version for games and possibly for a warm-up before using the much heavier hunting boomerang. It was also used for stirring up animals, which would then be killed with the Kylie.

Extraordinary records
Ball artist
On 11 November, 1999, Jacek Guzowski 'kept a tennis ball in the air with his feet for the longest time ever' - 5 hours, 28 minutes and 59 seconds, to be precise. His feet touched the tennis ball 35,000 times - an average of 107 times per minute and 1.8 times per second.

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