Playing with magic - 10th June 2022

Quidditch, the favourite sport of the fictional character Harry Potter has become a real sport played by people in over 40 countries.

Whilst flying on broomsticks may not be possible in the real world the quidditch players still run whilst astride a broomstick. Tiphaine Basquereau plays for the Olympians Paris team. She believes the broom makes playing that bit harder.

Tiphaine Pasquereau: "It's not just to say we do like Harry Potter, we pretend to fly or whatever. It really has a role because it serves as a handicap. We have to run while keeping it between our legs, so it forces us to handle the balls often with one hand. They are volleyballs, so they are quite big in diameter, so it is not necessarily easy."

Although these quidditch teams attempt to dissociate themselves from the world of Harry Potter many of the same terms are used. They still use swaffle, cognard, sweep and Golden Snitch. Though for lack of a winged golden ball the Golden Snitch is a tennis ball stuffed in a sock and attached to the shorts of a neutral runner dressed in yellow.

Quidditch is one of few team contact sports where there is a mix of male and female players and it draws on skills found in lots of other sports. Paul Bonnet’s captain of the French quidditch team.

Paul Bonnet:"We often find players who have done different sports before: rugby, basketball, volleyball, football. And in fact, everyone manages to fit in because there's huge diversity in the game, in what we have to do, in our roles. And so, everyone finds their place a little bit. It mixes several sports and obviously we have a good diversity of people, different physiques."

As national quidditch federations organise regular international competitions and strive to get it accepted as a serious sport there remain those who continue to consider it just part of the Harry Potter universe. Tess Harmand, President of the French Quidditch Federation.

Tess Harmand: "It's our goal as a federation to show that we really are a serious sport, that we organise competitions like any other sport, and that we put the same intensity, the same passion as any other individual or team sport. But there are still people who are more attracted to the really geeky side, which is around the universe and everything."