Over the next couple of years, though, as I reported articles from 21 countries, I felt my perspective change. The competitions I attended — motorcycle racing, darts, soccer, chess, cycling, basketball and whatever else — started to feel more alike than different. Athletes, whether they were skating in an Olympic rink in Norway or on a frozen lake in Austria, told me the same things about their motivations and desires. The bonds inside these communities, however different, felt equally strong, from the Swamp Soccer World Cup to the actual World Cup.

My assignment overseas will come to an end next month. As I get ready to return to New York, I feel as if I’ve achieved a deeper understanding of sports at their essence, of the heart of why people everywhere gather to compete.

And so, in that spirit, I decided to go watch a cigar smoking contest.

Slow and Steady

Humans are naturally competitive. That’s what Igor Kovacic, who holds the slow cigar smoking world record (3 hours 52 minutes 55 seconds), was explaining to me a few minutes before the competition began. I had found him pacing in a hallway with his headphones on, listening to Rage Against the Machine at full volume.

“I need to get angry, and then I put it into the competition,” he said. “I almost don’t like myself when I compete. I look like I’m going to kill somebody. I’m not that kind of guy.”

Kovacic broke down the event for me. There is luck involved, to be sure. The cigar you pick or even where you sit in a room makes a difference. But there is room for skill, strategy and instinct, too. One has to read the way a cigar burns, to interpret the heat emanating from its skin, to measure the weight on each puff.

People train seriously for this.

“Athletics like running or weight lifting are the only sports where people are truly competing against physical limits,” Bilic said. “But for sports like football, cricket, there are rules created by humans, and in the framework of these rules, people try to be the best. It’s the same in cigar smoking.”