A frantic and silly race around the room for teams.

Numbers: 6 people or more
Suitable for: Any age (with appropriate supervision)
Preparation time: Under 5 minutes
Venue: A large space, room or hall
Safety First: Watch out for scrapes and grazes if people fall off their ‘chariot’
Equipment needed:

• Sleeping bags or other suitable materials
• Something to mark out a racecourse (cones, tape, chairs, etc)

The game:
The idea of this game is to have a simple race around a pre-defined course. The first team to cross the finish line are the winners.

Teams are usually made up of three people; one is the ‘rider’ who will get pulled around the course, and the other two are ‘horses’ who need to drag the rider. The actual chariot could be made of whatever material you have around. Sleeping bags work well on smooth floors, but you could use blankets or even flattened cardboard boxes.

The rider sits on the end of the chariot facing forwards, using their hands to hold on as best as possible. The horses each grab the other end of the chariot and hold it behind them, so they too are facing forwards. On your command, the race starts and the horses run around the track, pulling the chariot and rider along the floor behind them. Of course, the chariot is not very stable and the riders tend to slip off or lose their grip at some point. When this happens, the horses must stop and allow the rider to climb back on before continuing the race.

Adaptation:
Try making it a relay race where on each lap, the ‘rider’ swaps places with one of the ‘horses’. If you don’t have enough space to race lots of teams, do time trials with one team at a time to see who can be the fastest.