Cockroach racing

Cockroach racing is a club gambling activity which started in 1982 at the Story Bridge Hotel in Brisbane, Queensland, Australia.

[1][2] The background to the starting of this race in Australia in 1982 is attributed to two bar buffs who boasted that the cockroaches of their area were the fastest in Brisbane.

They can generate speeds up to 50 body lengths per second which in a sprinter's language is of the order of 322 kilometres per hour (200 mph) or equivalent to completing a 100 metres (330 ft) sprint in less than 1 second.

[1] However, at the Loyola University Maryland, the event of cockroach racing is called "Madagascar Madness: The Running of the Roaches.

"[6] The students of General Entomology wing of the university train Madagascar Cockroaches for short sprints and also for marathon racing.

However, instead of solving the murder he pursues his interest in cockroach racing, taking a jar of Madagascar roaches to a conference.

The first to describe this entertainment in Russian was Arkady Averchenko in several feuilletons of the Constantinople period ("About cockroaches, coffins, and women empty inside", "Cosmopolitans").

Also known is the description in the play by Mikhail Bulgakov "Flight" (1927), as well as in the story by Alexei Nikolayevich Tolstoy "The Adventures of Nevzorov, or Ibicus" (1924).