Media Monster

Rick Reilly Once Competed In World Sauna Championships, Lived To Tell About It

Rick Reilly threw in his two cents on the death of a Russian man during the World Sauna Championships over the weekend, but far from offering an outsider’s tsk-tsking, Reilly speaks from a competitor’s point of view.

That’s right, Rick Reilly once threw his hat (and his body) into the World Sauna Championships.

I know something of the crippling heat they suffered because I competed in the event in 2007. Our saunas were actually hotter — 260 degrees Fahrenheit – but there was something worse this time, something exponentially more scorching.

You see, Reilly wrote a book earlier this year called “Sports From Hell” in which he searched for the world’s dumbest competitions. The cover of the book is Reilly putting what appears to be a ferret down his pants.

I remember the only other American entered — a New Yorker named Rick Ellis — getting out of his first “heat” after 8 minutes. I wrote in my book, “Sports from Hell”:

I’m waiting to congratulate him when I notice something awful. There’s two big patches of skin missing on his upper lip, just under his nostrils. “Dude, were you by any chance breathing through your nose in there?” “Yeah, why?” he says. “Your skin is all gone under your nose! It’s burnt off!” He feels his upper lip in horror. He runs to the mirror. It’s worse.

Is Reilly shameless for plugging his book at the expense of another man’s death? Well, when you put it like that, of course he is.

Then again, it’s hard to blame Reilly for writing this piece, at least the parts that deal with his personal experiences, because when the hell else does he get to talk about that time he was in a ridiculously hot sauna.

Hopefully, though, for everyone’s sake, he doesn’t include a book excerpt the next time a guy dies from ferret-humping.