ROMANEL LAUSANNE: Traditional Swiss wrestling, known as “schwingen” in German, has been a male preserve for centuries — the ultimate test of manhood for Alpine alpha males.

But a growing number of women are trying to muscle their way into Switzer­land’s top homegrown sport despite opposition from some men.

Schwingen pits two strapping wrestlers in baggy belted breeches against each other. To win, they must pin their opponent’s shoulder blades to the ground in the sawdust ring, with one keeping one hand gripped to the other wrestler’s shorts.

While around 6,000 men are registered with schwingen clubs, only 200 women and girls are formally involved in the sport, which is also known as “hosenlupf” or “breeches lifting”.

Faced with entrenched male opposition, the women created their own federation in 1992 and went their own way.

But such is the level of overlap — with men and women using the same judges and venues — some feel a merger is only a matter of time.

Anne Cardinaux, head of the organising committee of the Romandy wrestling festival in the hills above Lausanne, said that women wrestlers “are still not accepted among the men, not in the same federation.

“But they’ll try to get there one day.”

While a few thousand spectators were expected for the men’s festival in Rom­anel-sur-Lausanne, several hundred watc­hed the women’s events the day before.

“We are showing off the sport. People who are unaware of it are discovering it,” said Brigitte Foulk, spokeswoman for the Romandy Women’s Swiss Wrestling Association.

Proudly rural, the amateur sport’s hear­tland is in the German-speaking cantons. But the original handful of women wrestlers in Romandy in the French-speaking west has now swelled to 34.

Published in Dawn, August 10th, 2023