The Tournament of Tomfoolery returns after seven years in the wilderness.
After a hiatus of seven years, during which time many chaps and chapettes have forgotten how to toss a cucumber sandwich on a plate or ride a bicycle while holding a teacup and saucer, The Chap Olympiad is back on Saturday 18th July, from midday until 7pm.
Once again, the Field of Pleasant Dreams will bristle with the sound of legs in thornproof tweeds furiously pedalling bicycles, the whoosh of bowler hats being hurled towards hat stands and the collective cries of delight as a lady in a tea dress cuts a particularly elegant shape with a hobby horse.
The setting for this year’s Chap Olympiad is the verdant Sussex idyll of Grange Gardens, Lewes. This lush walled Elizabethan garden is a three-minute walk from Lewes Railway Station (which can be reached in one hour from London Victoria).
There will be a full bar serving wine, champagne and local ales by Harveys, as well as a cocktail bar. Food stalls will help line the stomachs of those who need to keep their wits sharp and their aim straight during some of the more challenging events such as Umbrella Jousting.
Firm favourites Cucumber Sandwich Discus and Hop, Skip and G&T will be on the roster of events, along with Tea Pursuit, Hobby Horse Dressage and the Oddjob Challenge. The rules will be the same as at all previous Chap Olympiads. Judges are not looking for displays of sporting prowess or fleetness of foot, and they will mark down anyone who even breaks a single bead of perspiration. What will be awarded points, and ultimately prizes, are artistic displays of elegance, panache and gentlemanly savoir-faire, along with signs of cunning, subterfuge and skulduggery.
Tickets will be released in April 2026. In the meantime, we suggest you get in training by limbering up your drinking arm and sharpening the creases in your trousers. The book of the Chap Olympiad chronicles the first twenty years of the event in Slower, Drunker, Better Dressed.
