COPENHAGEN: Santa Clauses from around the world convened in Copenhagen this week for their annual mid-summer Christmas Games, involving three days of snow boot racing and clambering up and down chimneys , a discipline they hope soon will become an Olympic sport.

"During the congress we will be staging our very own Christmas-in-July Olympic games, the main disciplines being climbing chimneys and snow boot races, the sort of thing we normally get up to in our high season in December," Kurt Fleming, said a Danish circus clown who doubles as president of the World Santa Congress.

"We want to see this noble art granted full Olympic status. It's too late for Athens now but we want to see the chimney clambering discipline at the Beijing Olympics in four years' time and we are looking into the possibility of getting reindeer sleigh-riding accepted at the Winter Olympics."

The congress, taking place in Copenhagen's lush Deer Park, is the 41st of its kind, and brings together Santas from all over Europe and from such countries as Canada, the United States, Japan, Venezuela and El Salvador.

Among the 150 Father Christmases gathered for this year's games were also newcomers from Russia and Estonia, while Finland's long-time participant was sadly missing - for political reasons, according to Fleming.-AFP