Forget the Olympics, Russian sauna championships turn up the heat

The event, involving 10 grand masters, is assessed using 16 criteria from thrashing technique to safety, writes Oliver Carroll in Noginsk, near Moscow

The bathhouse is much more than a place of steam – it’s a (mostly) men’s club (Oliver Carroll)

For the uninitiated, the Russian bathhouse is a bizarre ritual involving extreme heat, humidity and a spanking by tree twigs. For the participants of this weekend’s bathhouse master “world” championships in Noginsk, two hours east of Moscow, it was the altar on which dreams and nightmares were made.

The format of the Covid-era bathhouse games changed little from previous years – bar, perhaps, a little extra coughing. As before, 10 grand masters, whittled down from 240 competitors from Vladivostok to Voronezh, presented short steam programmes to an audience of hundreds. Judges, who sat under a gazebo opposite the Portakabin steam room, marked the hopefuls, figure-skating style, using 16 criteria from thrashing technique to safety.

Judges mark banya masters figure-skating style with a maximum 6.0 mark in 16 criteria (Oliver Carroll)