ESPN is a great repository for sporting news.

Especially news from the Baltic states.

Take Finland, for example.

Finland is the home of Sauna (that’s right, with a capital “S”). This relaxing past tie has been exported in various forms and varieties the world over, such is humankind’s love for a good, cleansing sweat.

But they don’t stuff around in Finland. Nosirree, not with Sauna. In fact, Sauna is a highly competitive sport, and when the big Sauna tournaments wheel around, the event is televised nationally.

So when ESPN filed this story, I was initially pretty amused. “How quaint”, I scoffed.

Well I stand humbled. I learned something today. Sauna men are Men. That’s right, with a capital “M”.

Check this out:

I was waiting to congratulate him when I noticed something awful. There were two big patches of skin missing on his upper lip, just under his nostrils.

“Dude, were you breathing through your nose?” I asked.

“Yeah, why?” he said.

“Your skin is all gone under your nose! It’s burned off!”

He felt his upper lip in horror. He ran to the mirror. The tops of his ears were split open and bubbling. Under his arms and on his back were bright purple patches. His forehead was painted bright red and blistering in front of his eyes. “Man, I’m burning up. Even my tongue is burned.” His wife begged him to quit, but he refused. Said he had trained too hard. She shook her head.

“What?” he asked.

And that’s when they called my heat backstage.

The yank who wrote this goes by the name of Rick Reilly, and you can find the rest of his misadventures into manly past-times in his book, Sports From Hell.

Are they all as hot as this one?