What athletic games did they play in the middle ages?

Answer 1

There were a number of sports in the Middle Ages. They did not have the formal rules that have been written down for sports in the last couple centuries, but what they lacked in formality they made up for with exuberance.

One of my favorites was called mob football, which had very few rules, was typically played in the middle of a village or town, could get passers by involved as players without even asking, and might use the door of a church as a goal.

One of the best known, of course, is jousting.

There is a link to a related question below.

Answer 2

Different sports were popular in different parts of the world. Most of the time when we talk about the middle ages we are talking about Europe.

There were lots of different target games based on the skills of archery (shooting bows and arrows). Targets might be large and stationary ("butts"), or smaller targets hung on poles or trees, or tossed into the air.

Europeans also played a game called "bandy" that was similar to the modern Irish game of hurling, played with a stick like a short Field Hockey stick and a small ball batted through the air (not on the ground).

Colf or bittle-battle was a game similar to modern mini-golf, where a club was used to move a ball towards and through a target. Rounders was a game that involved hitting a ball with a stick and running from base to base, it evolved into both cricket and baseball.

Races of various kinds were popular throughout the middle ages: people raced each other in foot races and horse races, and bet money on racing pigeons and dogs (Camel Racing was popular in the Middle East and North Africa). Wrestling was also very popular.

Modern jai lai is a descendant of the arm ball game that was a fad in the late middle ages when explorers brought rubber back from the New World. A variation of the arm ball game involved racquets and is the ancestor of modern tennis.

Campball, or football, was probably the most popular game in medieval Europe. There were organized games when the men of one village played against another village, but it was also a popular game for everyone to play together - grannies and little kids right alongside teenagers and adults. Laws were passed to prevent people playing on Sundays and fast days, or playing campball instead of working or practicing archery. You may read statements that football (or polo, or other games) were played with a pig's head (or some other head) but a head does not make a good ball - if you look at a skull it is not round, and it is very unevenly heavy. Most balls were either stitched of leather and stuffed with feathers, scraps of leather and fur, or sand (depending on how heavy the ball needed to be). Lighter balls were made by inflating animal bladders, which are much rounder than their heads!

For the nobility there were also sports of jousting and fox-hunting.

Children made up lots of games, just like they do now - hide and seek and tag and hopscotch. Blind-man's bluff (or buff) was a game where one person was blindfolded and had to guess who had tagged him/her.

Answer 3

usually in the castle courtyards or in any specified place in the land

Answer 4

minigolf