The real Top Guns: Never mind health and safety - the world's most dangerous sport is back... the Royal Navy's field gun race



Having covered every sport on the planet, and all the legends therein, the late Ian Wooldridge could offer a pretty reliable perspective on all things sporting.



His eyewitness accounts, from the 1972 Olympic massacre to Desert Orchid's finest hour, marked him out as the greatest sports writer of the age.



What's more, Woolers liked to get stuck in himself - be it running with the bulls in Pamplona or risking his neck on the Cresta Run.

Until his dying day in 2007, he was always looking for new heroes to add to his pantheon of greatness.



Man power: Robert Hardman (right) trains with the Portsmouth team

But on one point, Woolers never budged. As far as he was concerned, there was one breed of sportsman, one band of brothers, which stood out above the rest.



They were not well-paid. In fact, win or lose, they made not a bean. They were not famous, just household names in their own households.



And yet, as far as Woolers was concerned, the men of the Royal Navy Field Gun competition were way out in front when it came to nominating 'the toughest sport in the world'.

And after just a few minutes in their company - during which I tweak a hamstring and nearly get run over - I conclude that Woolers was, as usual, spot on. In the company of 18 men with old-fashioned nicknames (Shorty, Nobby) and old-fashioned attitudes ('if you get hurt, you moan about it later'), I am reminded what makes the Forces tick.



All these men are giving up months of their own time for nothing more than camaraderie and an almighty challenge: racing a Victorian cannon against the clock. And next week, for the first time in a decade, they will do it before the Queen.



This evening's two-hour training session here in Portsmouth's historic dockyard - the third of the day - is a surprisingly jolly affair. Everyone (except me) relishes the cry of 'Drill!', charging over the start line to heave 1,800lb of gun and carriage on to its wheels and drag it up and down a road at running speed.



When I find the whole contraption and its 18-strong team charging along faster than I can run, I have two options: dive out the way or get squashed. Today's practice is cut mercifully short because of an accident. No one is hurt (if they were, they would probably keep quiet).



It turns out that a solid, steel handle on the gun mounting has broken. It is an inch-thick, but it has simply snapped off in the hands of 37-yearold Petty Officer Anthony Din (known, needless to say, as Gunga). No wonder he has a bandage wrapped around what remains of his knuckles. Gunga is an affable chap, but I make a mental note to avoid a handshake.



There is nothing quite like the Royal Navy's Field Gun run, a wince-inducing display of teamwork and severed digits. To excel at this sport, you require the explosive speed of a sprinter, the strength of a weightlifter, the precision of a ballerina and the pain threshold of a mother of 12.

And now, ten years after it disappeared from national view along with the dear old Royal Tournament, the race is about to return to the big stage in front of both the Queen and the television cameras.



Next week, the 30,000 visitors to the Windsor Castle Royal Tattoo - including most of the Royal Family and celebrities from Coldplay's Chris Martin to Alan Titchmarsh - will watch two 18-strong teams of the Royal Navy's finest crashing around the main arena and performing a series of Formula One-style pit stops with a Victorian cannon.



Each set of kit weighs the same as a family car and each gun must be put together, taken apart and dragged up and down an 83-yard course, blasting off six shots in the process. It is all done in just over a minute.

The race has not been seen since the Royal Tournament ended a decade ago

At this speed, the process can, literally, cost an arm and a leg. But there is no prize money. The teams will be competing for the pride of their respective bases - HM Naval Base, Portsmouth, and HMS Sultan in neighbouring Gosport. After four consecutive nights, the winning crew will receive a trophy from the Queen and, perhaps, a drink from their commanding officer.



Across the Forces as a whole, the result is immaterial. The important

things is this: the Field Gun is back. To an outsider, this brutal event raises several questions. Why would anyone want to do it? Why hasn't it been banned on health-and-safety grounds? And how on earth did anyone come up with the idea in the first place? After all, the Royal Navy is supposed to fight at sea. Why are sailors running around with guns on wheels like the Royal Artillery?



Lieutenant Commander 'Grassy' Meadows - a Field Gun veteran who went on to become one of the Navy's top physical training instructors - sums up the general sentiment. 'It is, simply, the greatest team-building discipline there is. In the Royal Navy, nothing beats winning the Field Gun.'

It's an obsession which has cost him the middle finger on his right hand - 'a training incident, one of those things'. But he has no regrets about all the years he has devoted to an event which has its own motto: 'To The Limit And Beyond'.



This is a competition rooted in that most politically incorrect of imperial conflicts, the Boer War. In 1900, the entire British Empire rejoiced after British forces, besieged inside the South African town of Ladysmith for 119 days, were finally relieved. They owed their salvation, in part, to 280 Royal Navy sailors, even though Ladysmith is 100 miles inland.



The men of the Naval Brigade removed six guns from their warships and placed them on hastily-constructed gun carriages. These were moved inland first by rail, then by mule and, ultimately, by hand and ingenuity. Once in action, they brought down enough withering fire to drive off the Boers and liberate the diseased and starving garrison.



Queen Victoria was most impressed and dispatched a congratulatory telegram to the Naval Brigade, who returned home to a euphoric welcome. They were soon re-enacting their heroics at the Grand Military Tournament which, in due course, became the Royal Tournament, the annual celebration of the British Forces.



The gun display was turned into a competition and, each year, the big naval bases would recruit teams to heave the same guns over artificial walls and across a 28-foot 'chasm'. The teams would compete twice a day through the fortnight of the Royal Tournament and the results were signalled instantly to every ship in the fleet. 'It would make your day if your lot had won,' says Grassy Meadows, who represented Devonport in three Royal Tournaments.

Field guns are incredibly heavy and moving them is dangerous work

Rivalry was intense between the Oggies (Devonport), Pompey (Portsmouth) and the Wafus (the Navy nickname for the early pioneers of the 'wet and ******* useless' Fleet Air Arm). Injuries were ignored or suppressed. All that mattered was a winner's medal at the end of the tournament (silver for the winners, bronze for the runners-up).



'It was like winning or losing the Cup final,' recalls Grassy. 'If you won, you got a parade through the streets, a civic reception and all that. If you lost, well...' Since all his medals were bronze, I pry no further.



There was never a shortage of volunteers - up to 300 for each crew. A 'lucky' 50 would be selected and subjected to six months of intensive training before the Royal Tournament itself.



This annual spectacular might have done wonders for morale and recruitment but, with the advent of New Labour and Cool Britannia, ministers disliked what they saw as an outdated relic of imperial grandeur. The top brass also viewed it as a drain on everdwindling manpower.



In 1999, the last Royal Tournament staged its last race. But the Royal Navy was not going to abandon one of its most glorious traditions. Every year since 1907, the naval base at HMS Collingwood in Hampshire staged its own version of the Field Gun competition called the Brickwoods Trophy.



This was an outdoor event involving rival naval bases racing over a flat course. It did not involve big obstacles for the simple reason that these crews were practising in their spare time and could not manage the six-month training which the complex Tournament course - known as the 'command' competition - required.



The dangers and the discipline, however, remained exactly the same. Charging flat out with a ton of gun and turning it on a sixpence while simultaneously taking off the wheels is still a feat of titanic choreography. And so the Field Gun race has carried on, kept alive by more than 20 volunteer crews. In recent years, the Army and the Royal Air Force have entered teams, too.



The spirit of the Royal Tournament has not died either. Last year, the organisers of the Royal Windsor Horse Show decided to use their spectacular arena beneath Windsor Castle to stage the first Windsor Castle Royal Tattoo.



It was an Army affair, but proved so popular they decided to expand it into a tri-service event - just like the Royal Tournament - for 2009. It was obvious what the Royal Navy could bring to it - the famous band of the Royal Marines and historic Field Gun competition - and last year's Brickwoods Trophy finalists, Sultan and Portsmouth, were invited to take part.



I have come to the South Coast, with Grassy Meadows as my guide, to watch the preparations. Sultan's crew includes many new boys, but they have youth on their side. Their trainer, or 'Number One', is Chief Petty Officer Stu Moss, a Royal Tournament veteran.



'These guys are giving up three-and-a-half hours a day, six days a week for eight weeks and they are utterly dedicated,' he says proudly, adding that the 'guys' also include a woman. Petty Officer Sharon Barber, 45, is on the reserve list and will step in as a 'drag number' - a harness-puller - if there is an injury.

'I'm raring to go,' she says. 'One or two men might think "Hmmm?" but it's up to you to prove yourself and give your all,' she says. Her worst injury? 'I once scraped all the skin off my knees, but I got to the finish line - which was the main thing.'



The nearest sporting comparison is probably rugby. You have big blokes who do the heaving and lighter ones who do the dashing. The men who lift the gun are called the 'heavy ends'; the chaps who lift the wheels on and off are 'wheel numbers'; the man on the trigger is the 'firing number'; and the chap who runs around with the ammo is called 'speedy bullet'.



Over in Portsmouth, the team is considerably older - many are in their 40s - but it includes many veterans of the Royal Tournament and six physical training instructors. I am also surprised to discover that a third of the team are officers. In the old days, officers were excluded because they could not take orders from lower ranks. That has changed.



'You leave rank at the side of the sports field,' says Pompey's Number One, Warrant Officer Glen Young. So, in this team, you find the 'firing number', Petty Officer Gunga Din, giving orders to the 'extracting number', Jules Stevenson, who just happens to be a Lieutenant Commander.



'My rank doesn't matter here,' says Jules. 'Gunga is trusting me to get the shells out of the barrel and I am trusting him with my fingers.'



The youngest member of the team, Leading Physical Trainer, Matt Short, 27, is also in charge of team fitness. In the warm-up, he cheerfully barks orders at men who are not just senior in rank, but also 20 years older.



It's just another reason why the Field Gun is still revered as the ultimate sporting discipline within the Navy. No doubt, it is beyond the comprehension of our grasping 21stcentury political class that these servants of the Crown are happy to risk life and limb for nothing more than the honour of their units.



Perhaps, if they can drag themselves away from their taxpayer-funded plasma screens and patio heaters and get down to Windsor, our lords and masters might learn a valuable lesson in teamwork, public service - and downright courage.

