Heavy snow and difficult travel expected again, heaviest snow in southern Minnesota

MPR News helps you turn down the noise and build shared understanding. Turn up your support for this public resource and keep trusted journalism accessible to all. 

Turn Up Your Support

The big cheese of extreme U.K. sports events is back. 

Hundreds of spectators gathered Monday to watch dozens of reckless racers chase a 7-pound (3 kilogram) wheel of Double Gloucester cheese down the near-vertical Cooper’s Hill, near Gloucester in southwest England. 

The first racer to finish behind the fast-rolling 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 believed to be much older. 

The rough-and-tumble event often comes with safety concerns. Few competitors manage to stay on their feet all the way down the 200-yard hill, and this year several had to be helped, limping, from the course. 

Canadian contestant 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 comes from Nanaimo, British Columbia.

Matt Crolla, 28, from Manchester in northwestern England, won the first of several men’s races. Asked how he had prepared, he told reporters: “I don’t think you can train for it, can you? It’s just being an idiot.”

Sports

The Associated Press

Author

Dozens of reckless racers have chased a 7-pound wheel of Double Gloucester cheese down the near-vertical Cooper’s Hill near Gloucester in southwestern England. The cheese-rolling race has been held at Cooper’s Hill, about 100 miles west of London, since at least 1826.

Rolling thunder: Contestants chase cheese wheel down a hill in chaotic UK race

Go Deeper.

Like this?