DEXTERITY GAMES

...crown caps, marbles, pogs...

Quand il jouait aux billes, ses billes à lui s'appellaient Antonin Magne, ou Leducq, ou Vietto"
(Bobet, Jean. Louison Bobet, une vélobiographie. Paris : Gallimard, 1958, p.229)

Cycling races (and other sports) with marbles or crown caps used to be very popular in Italy, Spain, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Poland... though there were differences between countries. Maybe crown caps were not so important in France, maybe miniature riders were not produced in some countries, etc.

I have been gathering information on these games for a while which I hope to share it here soon (although, of course, these are not exactly "board" games).

Needless to say, I would love (and even expect) to receive more information or even pictures about people who played these games in their youth

Tim Krabbé (author of "The Rider") has been kind enough to send me a text he wrote back in 1987 for Elsevier Magazine. The text is called TOURS and recalls the memories of some adults who used to play cycling games in their childhood. Some of these were dexterity games. Unfortunately the article did not include photographs. (See "unpublished games" to read more about these games).

For the record, of the same family of Pogs or Crown Caps games, are the ones played with buttons. They are quite popular in Catalonia (where I live). The most played game is button football (also played in other countries, specially in Brasil), but button games include almost any kind of sport you can imagine. As I child I played button cycling races.

 

 

By the way, check these incredible beach
marble-cycling videos if you still havent't!

 

 

 

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