Congratulations (I guess) go out to St. Petersburg native Vladislav Pavlenko, first-place finisher in this year's annual "Bubble Baba Challenge," in which hundreds of people leap into Russia's Vuoksa River on top of an inflatable sex doll and race down the rapids. Pavlenko's time of 2 minutes 47 seconds was enough to beat out all of his competitors, but it's still tough for me to refer to him as a "winner."

Here's a picture of the race from 2007;  I can't imagine the scene has changed much since then:

According to a report on My Fox Boston, (who devotes a lot of attention to sporting events like this now that the Red Sox are tanking,) "Baba" technically means "peasant woman" in Russian, but also is "a crude term with sexual connotations."

Yow.

I think I need to teach my baby daughter a new word for her bottle.