Marbula One: The Race Of The Century

Waking up drenched in a pool of my own sweat, I suddenly realized that the second round of Marbula One’s first season was probably going on right then. I switched on my laptop and swiftly closed the numerous tabs titled ‘does corona mean i will pass all courses’ and ‘legal ways to get college to give good grades because corona’. It was time for the Sports of Men – Marble racing. Read on for the post-race analysis.

Here is the link to the video if you want to check it out.

The video started with amazing visuals representing the marbles. My favourite team is Snowballs, because it’s white. I mean, I like the colour, I’m not racist. It was taking place in the home ground of Team O’rangers, and word on the street is that there exists a “host’s curse.” Naturally, I don’t believe in superstitions, but well, some people do. Be right back, I need to take my Homeopathy medicine.

The race kicked off. Rolled off? Went off? The race started. The track had two splits, which favours a lot of collisions. There was a sandy straight path, leading right up to the conveyors. 

Team Hazers took the initial lead, after jostling in front of the initial rush. There were a lot of collisions happening but the neat line of marbles following each other reminded me of Wednesdays and Sundays in Kadamb Mess.

At the end of the first lap, it seemed that Team Smoggy had a decent lead. Team Snowballs are last, but it’s important to never lose hope. Even if you’re a dual degree.

Team Billy seemed to be getting close to the lead right after. You know what they say, ‘Don’t Stop Billyving”. Team Rapids was third at this point.

Team Billy then suddenly took the lead! Interesting turn of events. Team Smoggy took a decent swerve around the corner, but a sudden deviation from Team Billy seemed to have made a difference. 

Team Rapids came up to be second. Smoggy seemed to have lost his way. However in this time of sports and fun, suddenly Team WOZ met with a major incident. Upon a ride on the conveyor belt, they suddenly fell off it. It was a tense situation and a safety marble was deployed to give momentum to the now stuck WOZ. The other racers seemed to have been heading that way too, and they ended up pushing WOZ up. Billy was on the lead at this point, but the race still seemed alive.

Smoggy did manage to be in the second position after a brief headway, and there was an interesting scuffle going on between REZ and Rapids at the moment. Heading into the sixth lap, there was only a five-second difference between the top 11 marbles.

It was pretty interesting to see the strategies applied by the marbles here. Cutting on the inside is a common technique, but some teams also swerve on the outside once in a while. We also saw our share of marbles trying to screen their trailers. There’s a slow pace on the sand, and Rapid came out second after it. Tough luck, Smoggy. 

Billy seemed to prefer playing in the middle of the track and ended the seventh lap with increasing his lead by about half a second. The game seemed to be done and dusted, but little can be predicted in the ever-unpredictable sport of marble racing. 

Heading into the sand, Smoggy seemed to be gaining over Rapids. It is certainly a colourful fight over there (haha see how I used the different meanings of colourful? please help me I’m addicted to marble racing) However, Rapids used an impressive block, not allowing their second place to slip. Meanwhile, Billy entered the next lap having lost about an entire second of lead. I was interested to see if Rapids can pull something out of his sleeve and take the game. The game just blew wide open. 

The last lap was certainly going to be very interesting. I turned down the volume of my tute on the phone and was pretty caught in, I guess. Smoggy kept on trailing Rapids for a chance at the second place, but it was just not happening. 

The last lap turned out to be a downer, but downers just reminded me of IIIT so it was all good. I checked the leaderboard and saw the Snowballs finished 6th! Go Whites! The race ended and I took a brief moment to question my life choices. Watching the marbles go by their meaningless races seems pointless, but is whatever we are doing any different?