To celebrate having been awarded the All-Weights World Championship as part of its 2023 Cumberland and Wrestling programme on Sunday August 27, Grasmere Lakeland Sports and Show is inviting talented primary school-aged children to help celebrate this traditional Lakeland sport, by creating a design for a wrestling costume.
The show organisers are asking local primary school children, in Grasmere and Rydal, to take their template and complete it with a design of their own choice which demonstrates their love of their local area and things they would want to have on their costume.
However, children anywhere in Cumbria, aged under 11, can also enter independently from home, filling in the template with features and colours that highlight what they feel about life in this idyllic part of the Lake District.
“We expect that some designs will feature landscape and lakes but that other will have deeply personal elements, relating to home, family, friends and, of course, what children love in their daily lives,” says the show’s Sports and Field Manager, Deborah Black.
“Cumberland and Westmorland wrestling costumes can be very ornate and beautifully and lovingly embroidered by the parents and grandparents of passionate young wrestlers, so our competition is putting a spin on this and asking children what they would want on their costume.”
Wrestlers’ costumes are a major part of the region’s wrestling tradition and an annual competition is held at each Grasmere Lakeland Sports and Show, to reward the very finest. This will once again take place at this year’s show, on August 27.
Officially, these days, a wrestler competing in a Cumberland and Westmorland wrestling bout should wear a singlet (vest), socks, leggings fitting tightly to the leg and an elasticated centre-piece around the waist and the legs.
Traditionally, however, how a wrestler was turned out was very much part of their family pride and a way to compete against fellow wrestlers in the presentation stakes. It added colour and style to the sport and, even if not worn, for the most part, in bouts today, it is still a part of local custom kept alive through the costume competition.
To download the template, whether for your child or your school class, head to the news story about the costume competition at www.grasmeresports.com A prize of £25 from Grasmere Sports Committee, to be presented to the winner of the contest on Grasmere Lakeland Sports and Show day itself, awaits the best entry submitted before the closing date of August 15, 2023.
