The beautiful game

The Paganello World Beach Ultimate Championships in Rimini, Italy, starts late on Maundy Thursday. Around 1,300 ultimate frisbee players are gathered on the beach, old friends catching up in a hotchpotch of languages. Frisbees are everywhere - gliding through the air like miniature flying saucers, or spinning on the finger of an American freestyler. As the red wine flows and fish crackle on the barbecue, few people think of tomorrow’s gruelling schedule. Suddenly a parade of stilt-walkers set off fireworks from their headdresses, a surreal moment of Fellini meets frisbee. Welcome to the World’s Greatest Frisbee Party - four days of global athleticism followed by nights of non-stop hedonism.

Cursing hangovers under the winking sun, Good Friday sees the 94 teams start competing for Monday’s finals. As the players warm up, frisbees soar through the sky with landings announced by cries of "Heads!" Although the spectating Italians are still in their winter wardrobe, spring is undeniably in the air. The sand is soft and yellow. "Perfect for laying out," I am told, but before I can be informed of the precise nature of this activity, time has started running.

Now here’s where a lot of people get confused. Ultimate is a game played with frisbees but not in the way that you see aimless Brits doing it in the local park in the event of freakish hot weather. The official game is one that demands skill, speed and stamina. A cross-breed of netball and American football, it is played by two teams of up to 12 players, although only five are present on the pitch at any one time (seven when played on grass). Pitches are 75 x 25 metres and capped at both ends with an ‘end zone’. The game starts with teams lining up opposite the end zone they are aiming for and throwing the frisbee (or disc) towards the opposition. The graceful flight of the disc is achieved by spinning it with a subtle flick of the wrist, and points are scored when the disc is caught in the end zone. Like netball, players can’t move with the disc or hold it for more than 10 seconds, and players are rigorously marked but without physical contact. Tournaments are split into three divisions: a women’s, an open (mostly men) and a co-ed (or mixed) division - this last is the most popular and requires at least two men and women on the pitch at any one time.

As there are no defined positions in an ultimate team, each player must have a high level of fitness - as well as an almost kamikaze desire to capture the disc. I later find out that ‘laying out’ is literally diving for the disc and emerging with sand-filled orifices. But above all, what makes ultimate unique and arguably stuck in the ranks of the amateur is the absence of a referee. Games are regulated by the players themselves, who rely on the ‘spirit’ of the game to ensure fair play.

The laid-back, anti-authoritarian attitudes of the ultimate can be traced back to its origins in the late Sixties, when American high school kids in Maplewood, New Jersey, invented the sport for extra-curricular amusement. Legend has it that one particularly mouthy player, Joel Silver, called it the "ultimate sport". It was certainly a magpie of a game, encompassing elements from basketball, hockey and soccer. At that point, up to 30 people could play on one side, so the pace was probably a lot less frantic than today’s version. But more importantly, it was a sport that didn’t just appeal to the jocks and PE clique. "It was a chance for non-athletes and the intelligentsia to play a sport," Silver has been quoted as saying. "There were also some druggie types. We were about evenly split between the better students and the half who smoked dope." A distinctive sweet smell was also detected on the sea air in Rimini.

But frisbees themselves were nothing new.

Since the Twenties, William Russell Frisbie of Connecticut had been in the business of pies. By 1958, his son had opened several outlets and was producing up to 80,000 pies a day. The story goes that the local students would devour the pies and cookies and then lob the tin lids at each other, calling out "Frisbie" to the catcher. By the time Silver et al got hold of these gliding platelets, Walter Frederick Morrison, son of the inventor of the car headlight, had put his visionary genes to good use and married the pie-tin design with that child of the times, plastic. So the frisbees of today had been trafficking the Californian beaches a good 10 years before ultimate was created.

Meanwhile, Silver and his crew’s embryonic game was struggling with how to define a foul. One bright spark came up with the suggestion that it was "any action sufficient to rouse the ire of your defender". Although the first published rules of the game in the early Seventies do mention referees, the game today harks back to this original statement of sportsmanship and good manners.

Good sportsmanship, however, is not always the easiest thing to call upon in the midst of a high-paced game under the baking sun. Players become weary (anybody who has sprinted into the sea for a skinny dip with their loved one will appreciate how difficult sand is to run on) and tempers become frayed. Ian Pearmain, one of about 10 Scots who are playing with British teams, acknowledges that not having a referee is generally successful but there can be incidents. "Any competitive sport that results in you getting pumped is going to create some tension," he says. "Although it’s a non-contact sport, there is inevitably going to be some contact. You do get a few arguments - the Americans are particularly notorious for that." Just then, a discussion erupts on the sidelines. A foul has been called by a British team but an American is contesting it. The opposition politely explains the rules, affirmed by casual onlookers. "OK, OK," shouts the American. Then, somewhat childishly, under his breath: "But we’re still gonna win."

And that’s about as heated as it gets, all through the tournament. Any raised voices are quickly countered with: "Hey man, chill, we’re playing frisbee." Hippy it may be, but it certainly beats some of the off-pitch activities associated with sports such as football.

"Just look around - people playing frisbee everywhere and they’re all loving it," sighs Pearmain. "It’s an amazing atmosphere, on the beach, in the sun. I remember playing in a tournament one year in Craigniddrie, near Edinburgh. It was in June but we played the final in horizontal rain."

Rimini may not be the most idyllic beach on the Italian peninsula but its length and soft sand make it perfect for an ultimate tournament. "The beach is a special place and so Paganello does have an extra special atmosphere," says Jumpi, Paganello’s principal organiser and retired ultimate player. "The original aim of the tournament was to add as much as possible to the games, so we introduced freestyle frisbee competitions, parties and live music. Ultimate frisbee isn’t just a sport, but a way of staying together, having fun and travelling. It’s a fantastic opportunity to meet different people and experience different languages and cultures."

But who is a typical ultimate player? As befits a sport that grew up in high schools and on university campuses, an overwhelming majority of players have at least one degree. University is still the first place where most people come across the sport. In Britain, it generally seems to attract those from a scientific or IT background. Jumpi is juggling his ultimate commitments with a PhD, and Iain Pearmain discovered the sport at Edinburgh University.

"I wanted to play football at university, but didn’t like the scene - they were quite an aggressive, arrogant crowd," he says. "I play frisbee mostly for the people."

It is a view reinforced by Scotland’s hot new sport tsar, Ashley Howard, who was recently appointed director of achieving excellence for SportScotland.

A Canadian national, Howard started playing ultimate at the University of Otranto. "A lot of people come to the sport as a distraction from their main sport, or if they’re bored or injured, so the standard of athleticism is already quite high," she explains.

"Many people are frustrated with the politics and macho behaviour of other sports and are attracted to the roots of fairness embedded in ultimate."

It is lucky that most of the ultimate converts go on to have lucrative careers, because the sport is not cheap. Up to 10% of players at Paganello have travelled from the US, Canada and Australia. Howard, who has played with the gold medal-winning Vancouver team, is critically aware of the cost involved.

"Unfortunately, ultimate is very expensive to play at an international level because you are self-funded. We ask newcomers to the Vancouver team to commit to spending 7000 every three months, because we travel to US tournaments every three weeks."

The financial demands of the sport are reflected in the 24 countries represented in Paganello. With the exception of the Ukraine, Czech Republic, Hungary and Liechtenstein, the rest of the competitors are from G8 or EU nations. Yet the game itself is incredibly cheap to play, requiring only a disc and a few cones. Some have suggested that its emphasis on fairness would be of particularly good use in communities fraught with ethnic conflict such as Bosnia or Albania.

Jumpi shared this view and he has plans to expand the sport. "We say we have the whole world here on the beach," he says, "but it’s not true - we just have the richest countries. It is a shame because ultimate would be a perfect sport for poor countries too. We try to keep the expenses low, and we make concessions for teams from places like Russia. In 10 years, we hope to have Paganellos all over the world, from Brazil to South Africa. We see ourselves as a travelling circus; we can pack up and go to any beach, anywhere."

For many people, however, the development and democratisation of the sport mean recognition at the highest level: the Olympics.

"When you have championships at a high level, it sows the seeds of credibility," says Howard. "Participation levels will only grow when there is a national programme. But obviously the Olympic Games requires referees and ultimate doesn’t have them. It is an issue that needs to be discussed."

Tentative steps were taken last year when ultimate made its debut at the World Games in Japan. "They changed the game a lot though," says Pearmain, cautiously. "There are so many ‘alternative’ sports about these days, I can’t help but think the Olympics’ doors are shut."

Other players voice concerns about expansion, arguing that it may destroy the essence and spirit of ultimate. "Of course, introducing the game to a wider audience will challenge the spirit," acknowledges Jumpi, "but it’s our responsibility to teach people about it properly."

Howard is likewise optimistic. "Even at international level we exchange gifts from our home countries and have tailored cheers for the team we’re playing with. I wouldn’t want to change the social aspect. When I play in Glasgow, I can throw around with a student who has never played before and they’ve no idea I’ve won a gold medal. No other sport offers that contact from top athletes. There are no hierarchies."

It is Monday afternoon and the Paganello women’s finals are in full swing. As usual, the crowd is supporting the underdog, a Dutch team highly revered for their collective age and ability to stay on the pitch longer than other players. Their throws display an almost Kama Sutra-like agility - forwards, backwards, over and under. The Dutch lose, bowing out to deafening cheers. Exhausted, they stand with their victors in a tribal circle, shaking hands, exchanging gifts and performing their team ‘call’. Meanwhile, the open division final gets under way, sand spraying under nimble feet. At this level, points are scored in a matter of seconds as the disc zig-zags its way from player to end zone. Each time the winning team scores, their supporters stand up, letters spelling out their name on eight naked torsos. By half-time, their rivals have cottoned on and are wearing their loyalty somewhere else. High-school jinks at a highly charged finale.

As the sun sets over Rimini, players shout their farewells, frisbeed up to the eyeballs and aching to the ankles. Someone once said that when a ball goes to sleep, it dreams of being a frisbee. Myself, I dream of being able to catch the damn thing. Maybe one day even I will be able to play this far-from-slack, glorious game.