OBERHOF, Germany—Stars of the Winter Olympics are creating quite a stir in a different contest: the world wok-racing championship.  Racers sit in the middle of kitchen-quality Chinese woks and hurtle down chutes of ice at speeds of up to 60 miles an hour. Four-seaters—four woks linked together in wooden frames—can clock 75 miles per hour.  Originally cooked up as a TV stunt, wok racing has become hot in Germany. On March 19, for the 2010 championship, 6,000 bratwurst-chowing, beer-downing wok fans packed the same 1,500-yard track here used by top bobsledders and lugers. Scalpers were charging €80 to €90 for €30 tickets, some fans said. Televised live, the race attracted 3.6 million German viewers.  Wok racing began in 2003. As a guest on a game show called "Wanna Bet?" German comedian and TV emcee Stefan Raab joked with the audience about riding a wok down a bobsled run. The audience laughed, so he did exactly that.  "It was really amazing. I thought, 'Why not create a new sport?'" said Mr. Raab, who has a penchant for dangerous stunts on his television show. He once wrestled a wild boar and emerged unscathed. He twice fought a German female boxing champion. She broke his nose.  Woks, which have been in use for hundreds of years in Asian cooking, weren't designed for easy handling on ice. The rounded bottom rocks in all directions, and racers who don't use their hands and feet for stability can find themselves spinning in circles, slamming into the track's walls, or keeling over and sliding wok-less.  Mr. Raab staged the inaugural 2003 contest in Winterberg, Germany, after convincing reluctant track officials that racers' body armor made it safe. Mr. Raab won, beating a motley crew of B-list celebrities, including a choreographer and an Irish-German folk musician.  Then Georg Hackl arrived. A three-time Olympic gold medalist in the luge, Mr. Hackl, now 43 years old, is that sport's most decorated champion. Known as the speeding weisswurst, after the veal sausage, Mr. Hackl has always looked lumpy in the lycra bodysuit used in competitions. But what the beer-drinking Bavarian lacked in athletic appearance he more than made up for with drive and technical skill. He once took a job as a metalworking apprentice to figure out new ways to improve his steel-and-fiberglass luge sled.  Mr. Hackl has brought the same nerve and resourcefulness to wok racing. He beat Mr. Raab in the second championship in 2004 at Innsbruck, Austria. He has won every title since then, except in 2006 when Irish-German folk musician and weekend warrior, Joey Kelly, lined his wok with lead to turn it into a stir-fry missile.  Mr. Hackl reclaimed his title in 2007 after polishing his wok with wax and heating its base with a blowtorch before runs.  More Olympic lugers and bobsledders soon signed up for the championship. At last year's wok championship, Mr. Hackl edged out Felix Loch, who won the gold medal in the luge at this year's Olympic Games.  These athletes have made the TV spectacle more of a serious sporting event, while a series of new regulations have helped reduce injuries. A singer with the German dance and trance band Scooter broke his arm in the first wok race. Mr. Kelly, who has competed in all eight wok championships, has cracked a rib, bruised both elbows and broken a small bone in his hand.  After a musician with the German heavy-metal band Oomph hit his head and crushed ribs two years ago, Mr. Raab limited the combined weight of a wok with a single rider to 286 pounds.  Stefan Raab, sitting on a wok, speeds down a bobsled run in Oberhof, Germany.  This year's championship was held in Oberhof, once a training ground for East Germany's winter athletes. The day before the race, as spring sunshine started to melt the track, Mr. Hackl was confident he remained tops in the wok.  "The venue is like my living room. I know the track and I know the curves," said Mr. Hackl, who retired from the luge after the 2006 Olympics.  Mr. Loch, fresh off his gold-medal performance in Vancouver, liked his chances in the wok. He said Mr. Hackl's heckling hadn't dimmed his confidence.  "He tells me that I can win at luge now, but that I can't beat him in a wok," Mr. Loch said.  Against these sliding Olympians, Mr. Kelly, who comes from a family of noted folk singers, complained he didn't stand a chance. "I am getting better, but there are professionals here," he said.  Still, Mr. Kelly held his own in the two runs to determine the championship. He made it to the bottom with friction burns in his lycra suit, but posted quick times.  The Olympic athletes were in a different class. They were low, flat and aerodynamic in their woks and traveled smoothly through the turns. Mr. Loch looked composed on the course, but he struggled to find speed, finishing in fourth place.  Mr. Hackl, stone-faced as he donned his plastic face mask before his first run, kept his feet pointing straight all the way down the course. In his second run, he glanced off the walls a couple times, but kept up a searing pace. He beat the runner-up, Mr. Kelly, by 10 seconds overall to hold onto his title.  In the four-seat wok, Mr. Raab and his crew, which included the four-time Olympic gold medalist bobsledder Andre Lange of Germany, edged out the team of four Olympians, who ran earlier in the evening when the track was slower.  Mr. Raab was ecstatic, pumping his arms on a stage amid confetti and fireworks.  "My aim is for the sport to be in the Olympics," he said. "Twenty years back, young people took these crazy boards and rode them down the ski slope and called them snowboards. Everyone was laughing at them and now it's in the Olympics."  Write to Adam Cohen at adam.cohen@dowjones.com
Started as a TV stunt in 2003, some of the top German bobsledders and lugers are now competing at wok racing, which has its own annual championship.