The first runner to finish behind the fast scrolling cheese gets to keep it.
The big cheese of UK extreme sports events is back.
Hundreds of spectators gathered on Monday to watch dozens of reckless runners chase a 7-pound wheel of Double Gloucester cheese down the near-vertical Cooper Hill, near Gloucester in southwest England.
The first runner to finish behind the fast scrolling cheese gets to keep it.
The cheese rolling race has been held at Cooper’s Hill, about 100 miles west of London, since at least 1826, and the sport of cheese rolling is thought to be much older.
The rough event often comes with security concerns. Few competitors manage to stay on their feet up the 200-yard hill, and this year several had to be helped, limping, off the course.
Canadian competitor Delaney Irving, 19, won the women’s race despite being briefly knocked unconscious.
“I just remember hitting my head and now I have the cheese,” said Irving, who is originally from Nanaimo, British Columbia.
Matt Crolla, 28, from Manchester in north-west England, won the first of many men’s races. Asked how he had prepared, he told reporters: “I don’t think you can train for this, can you? He’s just an idiot.”
