Word: pelotas
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...Saint-Jean-de-Luz, spectators ignored a broiling sun and crowded the town fronton, as the pelota court is called. Kids clambered in the branches of chest nut trees to get a better view. This was the biggest pelota game of all: the championship match between a team led by Basque Idol Jean Urruty and a team headed by his closest competitor, Spanish Champion Valentin Careaga...
Above the Bar. On regulation pelota courts, the fronton wall is 16 meters wide and ten meters high. The flat concrete floor is 70 meters long. After the pelota, a rubber-cored ball, is smacked against the wall, an opposition player must catch it and fire it back before it has bounced more than once. Points are lost by missing the ball, tossing it against the wall below an iron bar set one yard above the ground, or sending it sailing beyond the bounds of the concrete floor...
Over the years, Basques have developed four varieties of pelota...
...Yoko garbi, in which two-or three-man teams carry short, sickle-shaped wicker baskets. These chisteras, used for both catching and throwing, add a wicked impetus to the pelota...
...years, Jean Urruty is a past master at grand chistera. Next to the husky Spaniards in their rose-colored shirts, Urruty and his teammates looked a little too frail for so tough a game, but the very first serve dispelled any Basque doubts. Urruty bounced the pelota, caught it in his chistera and slung it against the wall with whiplash speed. There was a sharp, dry crack, and the ball had bounced back 60 yards. The Spaniards were already on the defensive...