Jeux Sans Frontieres 1975 Engelburg (CH) English commentary Full Show

An old episode of JSF or international It's a Knockout. Event held Tuesday 1st July 1975. Video rights owned by EBU/BBC and uploaded for backup purposes only. Teams: Pepinster (B) v. Giswil (CH) v. Leonberg (D) v. Chartres (F) v. Darlington (GB) v. Aosta (I) v. Veldhoven (NL) Games: Dressing the Snowmen, Bales of Hay and Tourists, Cow and Mushroom, Catching Butterflies, Milk Churns, Collecting Edelweiss, The Boxes in Haystack and The Skiing Tourists; Fil Rouge: The Hungry Bears; Jokers: Alpine Horns, which had to be played. This heat was held in the Monastery Square which is surrounded on the western side by the Gemeindehaus (Community House) and is overlooked on the eastern side by the beautiful Engelberg Abbey, a Benedictine monastery founded in 1120 by Blessed Conrad, Count of Seldenburen. Although the location was picturesque, the weather dampened things somewhat, and for the second year in succession, the Swiss heat was witness to heavy rain throughout, hampering the competitors on the games. It was a night of mixed fortunes for Swiss team Giswil. Under Swiss rules at the time, teams could not participate on more than one occasion (this was changed in 1977) and as Engelberg had participated in 1973 they could not take part in this heat, so Giswil appeared as the Swiss representative. Despite winning two games (one of which was their Joker), they were leading West German team Leonberg by 2 pts before Game 7 (which they had to miss). Leonberg failed to make any headway on them because they finished last on the game (see separate note below). This resulted in the Swiss still leading the West Germans by 1 pt before the Fil Rouge (Leonberg had tackled this first and were still in the lead), but the Swiss made a complete mess of the Fil Rouge and finished in 6th place. This resulted in Leonberg leading French team Chartres and the Swiss by 4 pts going into the last game, which saw the French finish in 2nd place followed closely by the West Germans. But where were the Swiss? Again, a disastrous game for the team ending in a 7th place finish! The day of recording was Great Britain team member David Stott's 21st birthday, and before the start of Game 7, Swiss commentator Jan Hiermeyer encouraged the crowd to sing 'Happy Birthday to You' to him, and they obliged.The game itself comprised the classic 'finding a needle in a haystack' scenario. Six boxes had been hidden in the most enormous haystack, and it was a clear case of diving in to find one of the six boxes. Time limit on the game was 2 minutes 30 seconds and after 1 minute 8 seconds the Belgian team member (who was 42 years old!) emerged victorious, whilst the others frantically searched high and low. Time was ticking away for the remaining teams. After 2 minutes and 25 seconds, David Stott emerged with a box, but he still had to run to the start of the course and place it on a marked podium. Just as he did so, Guido Pancaldi blew the whistle and Great Britain was given a time of 2 minutes 30 seconds! Incidentally, all the other four teams were each awarded 1pt, as they had all failed to find a box. Eagle-eyed timekeepers however, would have noticed that the game was in fact lengthened by an extra three seconds to allow the British competitor to finish the game on his birthday. If the referees had applied a strict timekeeping rule, the British team would have finished the competition with a total of just 27pts, which would have 'demoted' them to 6th place overall and 'promoted' the Dutch team of Veldhoven to 5th place! The Italian town of Aosta made its first of seven appearances in this heat. The town returned with a team in 1978 and 1979 and also made four other appearances when it combined forces with the ski resort of Pila, the town of Cogne and a team from the ski resorts in the Val di Gressoney for the Winter International series' of 1977, 1979 and 1980, respectively. It again combined forces with Pila to make a seventh and final appearance in 1988. However, the town was somewhat involved again in 1998 and 1999 when the Valle d'Aosta participated in the programme. [Description thanks to JSF Net GB]