Pétanque, a french sport

Heard of this word? Pétanque? Guess not for those who are not European.
It is basically a type of French sports which is similar to lawn bowling.

Pétanque is a game of boules. It’s goal is for players to throw the metal balls as close as possible to a small wooden ball called a cochonnet (piglet). The game is normally played on hard dirt or gravel, but can also be played on grass or other surfaces. Sandy beaches are not suitable.

Pétanque, consists of the metal balls and the wooden piglet

Click here to read the game in detail.

Wikipedia tells that the history is as follows:

Pétanque is reputed to have been invented in 1907 in the village of La Ciotat near Marseille as a less physically-demanding form of jeu provençal. Physical effort was reduced by shortening the length of the pitch by roughly half and replacing a moving delivery with a stationary one. The name is derived from the term pieds tanqués, which in the Marseilles dialect of French means “stuck feet”, because in Pétanque the feet have to remain fixed together within a (small) circle. It is of interest that this also means that handicapped people in wheelchairs can compete without any disadvantage. Pétanque has become so popular that the term Jeu de Boules (game of balls) is often used to refer to it, even though Pétanque is only one of several variants of boules. Many French villages have a special stadium for the game called a Boulodrome.