When you can't sell or even give away your well-worn hardware, it's not unheard of for folks to get a little creative with how they get rid of their e-waste. There are a number of ways to dispose of old tech—though I would strongly recommend against shooting your old phone with an archery arrow, and I would also ask you not to ask me how I came into possession of this knowledge. Thankfully, I've just learnt about a hardware harming pastime I can happily shout about.
CloudFest is a cloud infrastructure conference that saw folks from all over the globe descend on Europa-Park in Rust, earlier this year, and once again brought a little known underground sport to a wider audience: Server tossing.
Conference attendees of all ability levels and genders were welcome to apply to toss servers—the only necessary qualification requested was the "desire to throw a server really %&#*ing far."
The World Server Throwing Championship has been enjoyed by a spectating crowd at CloudFest for a couple of years now—and applications are already open for the US-based server tossing event coming up in November. The sport itself has a long and largely made-up history, but its most likely origin story can be traced back more than a decade to some disgruntled sys s in Holland.
The first edition of the tournament as we know it today took place in 2011, giving rise to a compound word that makes me wish I spoke a little more Dutch: 'Serverwerpen'.
Archival footage of that 2011 competition looks almost quaint now, but compared to the sizzle reel for 2025's championship, there is one thing that stands out to me: namely, how close the crowd is on all sides in the footage from the more recent events. I'm sure spinning, shotput-style windups are disallowed to minimise the risk of a server toss that goes offpiste, but the lack of eye protection gear does still make me wince at every throw.
Thankfully, it appears most competitors and attendees come out of the event in far better shape than any of the servers. Competitors have two attempts to lob a server as far as they can, with the qualifying throws from 2025's event not just seeing some impressive air but record-breaking distances too.
According to this recap of the 2025 event, Linda Splitt placed first in the women's division by hurling a server a distance of 11.10 metres—an honour she also lists on her LinkedIn profile. In the men's division however, there was a major upset as Thom van Hal placed first with a throw of 13.18 metres, wrestling the previous record from Bartosz “The Beast” Wojciak who won last year.
Now I don't know about you, but I'm definitely not an IT professional immersed in the world of cloud infrastructure—nor am I especially gifted in the strength department. All the same, I'm still adding 'lob a server' to my career bucket list.
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