Danish poker pro Gus Hansen recently made news for his pursuit of a little-known sport called racketlon. The game involves playing one set of tennis, badminton, squash and table tennis in a match.
Apparently, Hansen has gotten very serious about the game too since he’s training around 5 hours a day, and hopes to win the racketlon World Cup next year. We’ll get to see if the 37-year-old is successful in his pursuit of the title on December 2nd, 2012 when the World Cup event takes place.
Gus Hansen spoke about his love of racketlon by saying, “Racketlon is a very fun sport, and I want to see how far I can go with it. And unlike athletic decathlons, it has a fair point system.” He also added, “You have to be an addict to succeed and that’s me. I have a good chance to be a contender, but then I have to improve considerably – especially in table tennis and badminton.”
Expanding on Hansen’s comments, he is a much better tennis and squash player than he is at table tennis and badmitton. However, he hopes to change this by attending various camps and training facilities in Sweden over the next few months.
Assuming he can succeed in his goal of winning the World Cup of racketlon, he’ll receive a modest prize worth around $4,700. Obviously this is nothing compared to what the Great Dane is used to competing for on the poker tables. He has made well over $9.3 million in live poker tournament play, which includes three WPT titles and a 2007 Aussie Millions win.
It doesn’t look like we’ll see Gus Hansen adding to his poker accomplishments for a while though since he’s training so much for racketlon.
