Office Chair Drifting Competition

The Office Chair Drifting Competition usually exists as an entertaining event, with different rules and formats in various regions.

Germany:

• The office chair competition held in Bad Koenig-Zell, central Germany, sees participants wearing helmets and knee pads for protection as they sit on office chairs and race downhill rapidly. The event aims to raise funds for charity.
• The "German Office Chair Racing Championship" held in Bad Homburg features a sloped asphalt track lined with hay bales. The chairs must be standard office chairs with five legs, and no motors or brakes are allowed, although handles can be added. As participants speed downhill on their chairs, they may experience shaking or even death wobbles due to small stones on the road.

Japan:

• In a competition in Okayama Prefecture, Japan, participants must purchase standardized chairs that cannot be modified. The race format includes a 30-meter straight preliminary and an 180-meter circular track final.
• In another event, participants compete in teams of three, relaying around a 200-meter track.
• The office chair racing competition held in Yuzhu City features a unique format where participants race backward on their chairs. The competition consists of two rounds, starting with 56 teams in the preliminaries, with the top 28 advancing to compete for the "Chair Gold Award." Each team of three sits on office chairs, kicking the ground with their feet to move backward, taking turns to "run" for two hours. The champion receives 90 kilograms of locally produced rice from Yamagata Prefecture, and the event has been held for 10 years.

Chengdu, China: The inaugural Office Chair Racing Competition was held on June 17th on Jiaozi Financial Street, featuring a corporate team relay format with each team consisting of three members (two men and one woman) competing in a relay based on total time.

Gaming: There are also games themed around office chair drifting, such as "Office Drift," an Android game that brings the racetrack into the office space. Players become "office chair racing experts," using spinning office chairs instead of sports cars to race among stacks of files and printers. They can perform stylish drifts with a light touch of the screen and even bump into colleagues' chairs, but must be careful not to hit office partitions or get caught by the boss.