Europe

Because the Netherlands is largely below sea level or right on sea level, there are many waterways and canals. In the swamps of the Netherlands, the pole has been used to jump over watercourses for a long time. People often tried to jump over these canals using the pole.
The favourite entertainment, in the old days of, people living in the northern regions of Groningen and Friesland was collecting eggs of peewits. They were considered a delicacy. Often, to get them they had to overcome wide channels.
Brueghel's paintings already show the Dutch jumps through the canals. The first written certificates come from 1200.
Obviously, people were not satisfied only with jumping, so they started using longer and longer poles. Over time, it becomes an opportunity to compete in jumping above the canal with its use. That was the beginning of fierljeppen.
In the village of Baard (Frisia), on 24 August 1767, the first known official tournament took place, organized by the widow of Ype Gerbens, the local ruler. The competition was the result of bet, as reported by Leeuwarder Courant (the oldest daily newspaper in the Netherlands). Some sources claim that the year 1771 has been the official beginning of the competition.
In the 1930s, the sport competition was very similar to what it is nowadays. Official rules were established regarding the course of the competition, measurements and conditions of competition. Since 1956, regular competitions have been held in Friesland (all archive data with results are available on Polstokbond Holland (PHB) and Frysk Ljeppers Boun (FLB) websites.
The chairman of BFVW (Bond van Friese Vogelwachten) Sjoerd Span and Lykele Miedema the director of the Miedema factory, founded Fryske Ljeppers Kommisje (FLK) together with representatives of Vogelwacht, Winsum department. FLK consisted of members: Feije Broersma, Geert Dijkstra, Klaas Jepma and Sybren Bakker as well as Sjoerd Span and Lykele Miedema. Sjoerd Span became chairman. On August 10, 1957, De Fryske Ljeppers Kommisje (FLK) have organized the first official fierljep competition in Winsum under the guidance of BFVW. On 13 January 1960, the Association "Frysk Ljeppers Boun" was founded from the merger of FLK and Bond Voor Friese Polsstokverspringers - BVFP. On 28 June 1978, the statute was established in Winsum, and the last modification took place on 26 April 1988.
In 1957, the Friesland league was created, afterwords leagues in Utrecht and South Netherlands, and in the 1970s the first championship of the Netherlands took place.
In the German region of East Frisia, this sport is known as Pultstockspringen. Today it is primarily cultivated for entertainment or as an attraction for tourists, but there is still an official annual National Fierljepping Manifestation (NFM) in the Netherlands. The competition takes place between the clubs that deal with this sport.
Up to 1975, people jumped on wooden poles, with a maximum length of 10 meters, which were then replaced with aluminium poles with a maximum length of 12.5 meters, including the extension. In 2006, they were replaced with plastic poles with a maximum length of 13.25 m, which are stiffer and less bend. The plastic allows to jump further. The Dutch record was 19.40 m for 15 years, belonged to Aart de With from Benschop which has been beaten many times during the season, four jumpers in 2006 managed to break the record from 1991. The disadvantage of plastic is its poor resistance to point loads, which should be handled with poles carefully.
Foreign tourists who visited Friesland and watched this sport contributed to its popularity around the world. Currently, competitions are organised in other places, although at a lower level due to the smaller number of competitors and the lack of appropriate locations.

Fiolet, once known as baculot or fiollet, is both an individual and team sport in which players use a stick to hit a ball in flight. Similar to rebatta, fiolet originates from lippa, an ancient Italian folk game dating back to the 15th century. According to the player and traditional sports scholar Pierre Daudry, different variations of the game were referred to in Savoy as “ara, batonnet, baculot et fiolé.” The earliest recorded references to fiolet date back to the late 19th and early 20th centuries. It is said that, in the past, players would go to the forests of Quart, specifically the locality of Les Îles, to gather branches to make sticks for the game. However, these same branches were also used by tsan players to make their sticks, which created tensions over who would secure the best ones. In 1882, a municipal ordinance
in Aosta even banned games like “boules, paume, baculot et autres jeux” within the town due to the high risk of hitting passers-by. This even led to a written protest from baculot players, who were frustrated by the difficulty of sharing space with the soldiers training at the Piazza d'Armi di Aosta, who did not want to be injured by the fiolets being thrown around. The fiolet players, however, had good reason to protest. The Piazza d'Armi, then known as the Champ de Mars, was a large plateau between the Plot and the faubourg of Saint-Denis.
From the origins of the game, it was a traditional gathering spot for players in the valley, a true “Valdostan cradle of fiolet,” which was only later occupied by the military. The Champ de Mars was owned by the municipality and had been rented to Joseph Frassy with the stipulation that the spring and autumn baculot championships be held there. In fact, official baculot competitions continued to be held there until 1934, after which the regional competition moved to Aosta's Municipal Stadium in 1935. Another important turning point in the game’s history came in 1924 with the founding of the Aosta Sports Club, a multi-sport club with its own statute, management committee and people in charge of individual games. Within a year, the club appointed Joseph-Charles Farinet and René Fusinaz to draft the first
official regulations for the game of baculot, leading to the establishment of an organised championship. At the time, the game was often viewed through certain stereotypes, later challenged by scholars like Pierre Daudry and Richard Savoye. It was considered “cowardly,”
exclusively male and associated with older men who enjoyed a drink or two. However, some testimonies suggest that fiolet was regarded as an elite game, at least in the early 20th century. Lawyers, engineers and professionals of all kinds competed in it, including the mayor of Aosta himself, César Cabloz, who took part in a town challenge in 1900 (Francesia, 2002). In reality, fiolet is a team sport that promotes generational mixing and is enjoyed by both men and women.

Goose pulling (also called gander pulling, goose riding, pulling the goose or goose neck tearing) was a blood sport practiced in parts of the Netherlands, Belgium, England, and North America from the 17th to the 19th centuries. It originated in the 12th century in Spain and was spread around Europe by the Spanish Third.
In El Carpio de Tajo (Spain) goose pulling is practised on every July 25th to celebrate the liberation (Reconquista) from the Arabs in 1141. Later, during the dictatorship of Franco, the use of live geese was prohibited by a new animal protection law. Instead of geese, ribbons tied to sticks were used, which the riders had to insert into metal rings. When democracy returned to Spain, the use of geese was again allowed.

Goose pulling in 19th-century West Virginia, as depicted by Frederic Remington (source:https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Goose_pulling#/overview)

Goose pulling is attested in the Netherlands as early as the start of the 17th century; the poet Gerbrand Adriaensz Bredero referred to it in his 1622 poem Boerengeselschap ("Company of Peasants"), describing how a party of peasants going to a goose-pulling contest near Amsterdam end up in a brutal brawl, leading to the lesson that it is best for townspeople to stay away from peasant pleasures.
Although the use of live geese was banned in the Netherlands in the 1920s, the practice still arouses some controversy. In 2008 the Dutch Party for Animals (PvdD) proposed that it should be banned; the organisers, Folk Verein Gawstrèkkers Beeg, rejected the proposal, pointing out that there was no question of cruelty to animals because the geese were already dead.

Belgian goose pulling is accompanied by an elaborate set of customs. The rider who succeeds in pulling off the goose's head is "crowned" as the "king" for one year and given a crown and mantle. At the end of his "king year" the ruling king has to treat his "subjects" to a feast of beer, drinks, cigars and bread pudding or sausages held either at his home or at a local pub. The kings compete with each other to become the "emperor". Children participate as well; in 2008, the children's goose pulling tournament in Lillo near Antwerp was won by a 14-year-old who won 390 euros and a trip to the Plopsaland theme park.

In Wattenscheid (Germany) it is believed that the custom was brought by Spanish soldiers who were stationed in 1598 and 1599 during the Eighty Years' War and later in the Thirty Years' War. In some other places of Germany it was forbidden.

The sport appears to have been relatively uncommon in Britain, as all references are to it as a curiosity practiced somewhere else. The 1771 Philip Parsons locates it in "Northern parts of England" and assumes it is unknown in Newmarket in Southern England.
In a satirical letter to Punch in 1845 it is regarded as a barbarous practice known only to the bloodthirsty Spaniards, like bull-fighting.
The serious work Observations on the popular antiquities of Great Britain, of 1849, calls it "Goose-riding" and says it has been "practiced in Derbyshire within the memory of persons now living", and that the antiquary Francis Douce (1757–1834) had a friend who remembered it "when young" in Edinburgh in Scotland.
From these references it would appear to have died out in Britain by the end of the 18th century.

The Dutch settlers of North America brought it to their colony of New Netherland and from there it was transmitted to English-speaking Americans. Goose-pulling was taken up by those at the lower levels in American society,[3] though it could attract the interest of all social strata. In the pre-Civil War South, slaves and whites competed alongside each other in goose-pulling contests watched by "all who walk in the fashionable circles."[13] Charles Grandison Parsons described the course of one such contest held in Milledgeville, Georgia in the 1850s (Parsons, Charles Grandison (1855). Inside view of slavery: or A tour among the planters. John P. Jewett and Co. pp. 136–7).
The prizes of a goose-pulling contest were trivial – often the dead bird itself, other times contributions from the audience or rounds of drinks. The main draw of such contests for the spectators was the betting on the competitors, sometimes for money or more often for alcoholic drinks. One contemporary observer commented that "the whoopin', and hollerin', and screamin', and bettin', and excitement, beats all; there ain't hardly no sport equal to it." Goose-pulling contests were often held on Shrove Tuesday and Easter Monday, with competitors "engaged in this sport not just for its excitement but also to prove they were "real men," physically strong, brave, competitive and willing to take risks."
Unlike some other contemporary blood sports, goose pulling was often frowned upon. In New Amsterdam (modern New York) in 1656, Director General Pieter Stuyvesant issued ordinances against goose pulling, calling it "unprofitable, heathenish and pernicious." Many contemporary writers professed disgust at the sport; an anonymous reviewer in the Southern Literary Messenger, writing in 1836, described goose pulling as "a piece of unprincipled barbarity not infrequently practised in the South and West." William Gilmore Simms described it as "one of those sports which a cunning devil has contrived to gratify a human beast. It appeals to his skill, his agility, and strength; and is therefore in some degree grateful to his pride; but, as it exercises these qualities at the expense of his humanity, it is only a medium by which his better qualities are employed as agents for his worser nature." (Simms, William Gilmore (1852). As good as a comedy: or, The Tennesseean's story. A. Hart. p. 115.)
The sport was challenging, as the oiling of the goose's neck made it difficult to retain a grip on it, and the bird's flailing made it difficult to target in the first place. Sometimes the organisers would add an extra element of difficulty; one writer describing an event in the American South witnessed "a [man], with a long whip in hand ... stationed on a stump, about two rods [10 m / 32 ft] from the gander, with orders to strike the horse of the puller as he passed by." The reaction of the startled horse would make it even more difficult for the puller to grab the goose as he went by.
Goose-pulling largely died out in the United States after the Civil War, though it was still occasionally practised in parts of the South as late as the 1870s; a local newspaper in Osceola, Arkansas reported of an 1870s picnic that "after eats, gander-pulling was engaged in. Mr. W.P. Hale succeeded in pulling in twain the gander's breathing apparatus, after which dancing was resumed."

A variant called "rooster pulling" has survived in New Mexico for some time. A rooster was buried in the sand up to its neck, and riders would try to pull it up as they rode past. This was later done with bottles buried in the sand.

Gouren became a popular sport in the Middle Ages. It was mainly practised by peasants, even if some priests also practised it. Breton lords learned it and also had some champions who fought for them. During festivals the nobles could fight each other using their champions, it was sometimes a way to solve conflicts.
With the French revolution of 1789, gouren lost its notoriety. The lords could no longer organise festivals and the churchmen participated in the loss of notoriety. Speeches banished gouren and its use: "...all those who go to the fights of St Kadou will be nothing but thieves, debauched and rascals who will roast in hell...". (said in 1831). Gouren survives however thanks to peasants in some regions of Brittany. The sport then became a peasant game.

In the 19th century, several writers described gouren tournaments, and several drawings and paintings were also produced, showing the sport in all its different forms. The tournaments organised by the festival committees were meeting places for wrestlers. Wrestlers fought for honour, challenge, pleasure and the prestige of being the strongest man, but the prizes for the winners could be considerable: sometimes a simple handkerchief or a hat, but also a sheep, a bull or a sum of money.
With the First World War in 1914 many Bretons, and therefore wrestlers, died in the war. In addition, the cities became attractive, thus emptying the countryside, which had the effect of weakening this traditional sport.

In 1930 Doctor Charles Cotonnec decided to create an organisation called FALSAB (Federation of Friends of Breton Wrestling and Athletic Sports) which would establish a set of rules. Each fight will be supervised by 3 referees and the fight will have a limited duration, depending on the age. Weight and age categories are also created. Other results than the "Lamm (perfect fall on both shoulder blades, ending the fight) were also created: the "Kostin" (fall on one shoulder blade) and the "Kein" (fall on the lower back), which made it possible to decide a winner at the end of a fight.
After that, the federation of gouren was finally created in 1980, it also allows to train wrestlers, referees and competition managers. With this, gouren also opened up to women. Since then, departmental, regional and European championships take place every year, as well as championships during summer festivals.