Spectator Sports
Whereas traditional Canarian sports such as wrestling and stick fighting are undergoing a renaissance on Tenerife, it is football , and in particular support of Club Deportivo Tenerife, that impassions most of the locals. Tickets to either wrestling matches or football games are hard to find, but well worth the bother if you do. If you want to catch the island's men at their most animated, it's worth trying to secure a ticket to the home matches of local team Club Deportivo Tenerife , who play in Santa Cruz. With a well-respected pedigree in the Spanish league, it's often hard to get hold of tickets for CD-Tenerife's games. But if you call the box office at Estadio Heliodoro Rodriguez Lopez (Mon-Fri 10am-1pm & 5-8pm; tel 922/291 699 or 922/240 613) a couple of weeks ahead you might be lucky; seats cost ?36, stands ?11. Any sizeable place is likely to have a ring for contests of Canarian wrestling ( Lucha Canaria ) and information on fixtures can be gained from the Federacion de Lucha Canaria, Callejon del Capitan Brotons 7, Santa Cruz (tel 922/251 452) - where bouts are held on Friday and Saturday evenings. The rules of this relatively non-violent sport are simple and involve two barefoot men in a round, sandy ring attempting, by gripping the bottom of the opponent's shorts, to manoeuvre each other to the ground. Kicks and punches are not allowed. If any more than the soles of a man's feet touch the ground he loses the round. There are three rounds altogether and winning two rounds secures a point for the victor's twelve-man team. The winner can then choose to stand against a new opponent or let a team-mate take over. Bouts continue until one team has the twelve points it needs to win, and the whole contest can take around three hours. Although most wrestlers are beefy, balance, strength and grappling technique - along with generous helpings of gofio - are said to be the key. A more minor tradition, and one primarily making appearances as a demonstration sport at fiestas, is stick fighting ( Juego del palo ). This contest, a derivative of Guanche stick-and-stone duels, uses large, two-metre-long staffs to both attack and defend, with the aim of trying to knock an opponent off his perch on a relatively small flat rock. The only other traditional Canarian sport that occasionally rears its (ugly) head, is the now illegal practice of cock-fighting , where cocks armed with spurs are encouraged to carve each other up. Incidentally, bull-fighting never caught on in the Canaries, although a speculatively built ring still stands in Santa Cruz.
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