I asked Simon Besteman, Director of Public Affairs and Community for Dutch Cloud Community, about the history of the sport of Server Throwing. I was expecting some short answers to the supplied questions, but he went much bigger—Simon shared the history of Server Throwing, with no embellishments, fabrications, or exaggerations of any kind. I, for one, find this account to be 100% credible and have no notes, so I’m sharing it here in its entirety. Over to you, Simon!
—Jordan Yerman, Senior Copywriter and Content Lead, Cloudfest
An iconic sport is created—and a legend is born
Okay. What you see here is a rare picture of the very first Server Throwing event, held in 1956. The servers were 5 MB IBM machines, weighing 800kg. These giants were borrowed from the manufacturer under a false pretext, which is now lost in the mists of time.
The record for that first edition stood at three crushed toes. The damage was in the hundreds of thousands of dollars. I can’t put that into Euros because the Euro did not exist back then.
Upon reflection, we were maybe a bit ahead of the times.
After this unfortunate incident, the competition lay dormant for a few decades.
However, unlike toes, the fighting spirit of computer nerds could not be crushed by this setback! As the technology advanced the athletic Dutch nerds began dreaming of a new tournament.
As it was raining, they decided to hold the event indoors. This was misguided in hindsight as you can see. From the picture below. Although the tournament was a success, several participants were injured, much data was lost, and all the organizers got fired.
New dawns
In 2011 an executive committee met for three months at a retreat in Switzerland and came with two major advances: instead of mainframes or entire racks, the participants would throw one server at a time! And they would use hardware that was not actually in use anymore!
These two breakthroughs paved the way for the modern form of Server Throwing that is popular today!
The first edition of the tournament in its current form took place later that year, in simple surroundings, and history records the winners were paid in beer. It’s unclear which beer, but Hoegaarden would be a good guess.
There is some video footage of the pioneers of modern Server Throwing at work in that legendary event.
Gradually through the years, the tournament gained in maturity and professionalism. Today’s champions are not only in impressive physical shape, but years of practice have helped them acquire a silky-smooth technique. It’s not just throwing: the server must glide through the air to optimize the aerodynamic lift, and hit the ground at just the right angle to keep on sliding once it hits. Tournaments have been won and lost by only a few centimeters.
The modern day throwers are accomplished athletes who prepare meticulously, honing themselves physically and mentally for the competition. One competitor, instead of driving her son to school, pushed her car down the road with the child in it!
Especially now that Server Throwing has reached the world stage, this year the Dutch participants will be at a low-altitude training camp in the runup to CloudFest, to bring the title back to the birthplace of this noble sport: Holland! We will see you in the Server Throwing Arena, looking down upon you from the top of the podium!
Now let’s go over to CloudFest CEO Christian Haeger to find out what to expect at the 2025 World Server Throwing Championship.
CloudFest is calling you
March 17-20, 2025
