(London) The most unusual of all British extreme sports is back.
Hundreds of spectators gathered on Monday to watch dozens of daredevil runners chase a 3-kilo wheel of Double Gloucester cheese up the nearly vertical hillside of Cooper’s Hill near Gloucester in south-west England.
The first runner to get behind the fast rolling cheese keeps it.
Canadian Delaney Irving, 19, won the women’s race despite briefly losing consciousness.
“I remember banging my head, and now I have the cheese,” said Irving, who is from Nanaimo, British Columbia.
Cheese racing has been held at Cooper’s Hill, around 100 miles west of London, since at least 1826, and the sport is believed to be much older.
This brutal event is often accompanied by security problems. Few competitors manage to stay upright the entire way down the 180m hill and this year several of them had to be limped off the course.
Matt Crolla, 28, from Manchester, north west England, won the first of many men’s races. Asked about his preparation, he told reporters: “I don’t think you can train for that, can you? You just have to be an idiot. »