Down to Earth quidditch - 10th June 2022

The magical Harry Potter sport of quidditch has made it into the human realm, with people in over 40 countries now playing it.

Though hovering and zapping through the air on broomsticks are essential in the fictional game, quidditch players run around the pitch straddling them which Olympians Paris' team member Tiphaine Pasquereau believes adds an element of difficulty to the sport.

Tiphaine Pasquereau: "It's not just to say we do like Harry Potter, we pretend to fly or whatever. It really has a role because it serves as a handicap. We have to run while keeping it between our legs, so it forces us to handle the balls often with one hand. They are volleyballs, so they are quite big in diameter, so it is not necessarily easy."

Quidditch teams aim to disassociate their identities from the Harry Potter franchise, but words from the fictional sport, such as swaffle, cognard, sweep and Golden Snitch still feature heavily in the sporting lingo.

However, some concepts had to be modified; such as the Golden Snitch, a golden winged ball, which has taken on the form of a neutral runner, donning yellow, with a tennis ball in a sock fastened to their shorts.

As one of the only contact sports with mixed gendered teams and drawing on the skills of various sports, quidditch prides itself on being eclectically diverse and inclusive. Here's French quidditch team captain Paul Bonnet.

Paul Bonnet:"We often find players who have done different sports before: rugby, basketball, volleyball, football. And in fact, everyone manages to fit in because there's huge diversity in the game, in what we have to do, in our roles. And so, everyone finds their place a little bit. It mixes several sports and obviously we have a good diversity of people, different physiques."

Organising frequent international tournaments, quidditch federations globally are striving to become an internationally recognised sport. Nevertheless, there are those who would still label the players as Harry Potter fanatics. Here's President of the French Quidditch Federation, Tess Harmand who's fighting for the cause.

Tess Harmand: "It's our goal as a federation to show that we really are a serious sport, that we organise competitions like any other sport, and that we put the same intensity, the same passion as any other individual or team sport. But there are still people who are more attracted to the really geeky side, which is around the universe and everything."