My home village plays host to one of the quaintest pastimes ever invented by man so I thought I’d tell you a little more about it. Forgot the claims of supposedly macho sports such as rugby, parachuting, and mountaineering. No sport in the world is more dangerous than…cheese rolling!
Ah, but what could possibly be life-threatening about a piece of cheese, I hear you ask. Well, in this case the cheese weighs 8lbs and the competitors pursue it down a vertiginious slope for some 200 yards. So steep is this slope that, officially, it is classed not as a hill but as a cliff. Most of it is a 2:1 gradient, or 45 degree slope, but at the top and towards the bottom it is 70 degrees or nearly 1:1.
The competitors (both male and female) throw themselves like demented lemmings from the summit of this cliff as they chase the cheese. In theory if they catch the cheese they keep it but, as the cheese gathers pace during the descent so much that it’s frequently travelling in excess of 70 mph, this tends not to happen. What usually happens is that the brave, and frequently intoxicated, “runners” cartwheel to the bottom where they are hopefully stopped by a team of catchers before they career headlong into the side of a house. The person who reaches the bottom first wins the cheese and gets to take it home. Records aren’t kept of the times but an average race usually sees the winner reach the end of the 200 yard course in less than 10 seconds. However a race can take a few minutes to complete as the remaining stragglers bounce, cartwheel, perambulate, fall, slide, and crash their way to the finishing line.
Without fail there are injuries every year - perhaps the most notorious was in 1990 when there were 22 casualties who required hospital treatment. In 1997 there were 37 injuries - so many that the races had to be delayed because there weren’t enough ambulances to ferry the wounded to hospital.
And it’s not just the runners who risk danger to life and limb. Because of the steepness of the hill, the inexact roundness of the cheese, and the various divots, hummocks and rabbit-holes, the cheese itself has been known to veer wildly off-course and crash into the crowd. One poor chap watching the event was clocked on the side of the head and tumbled, unconscious, more than 100 feet down the hill before being unceremoniously bundled into a waiting ambulance.
The weather too plays an important role. When it’s dry, the ground becomes hard resulting in more severe concussion and breakages to limbs. When wet it tends to be less severe although the tumbles due to the slippery grass are consequently more spectacular. But even a downpour can cause problems - in the early 1980’s a severe thunderstorm led many people to seek shelter under the trees. Unfortunately, in doing so, 4 adults and 4 kids were struck by lightning! One of the kids came back to run the race ten years later and merely succeeded in snapping his thigh-bone in half.
To further emphasis how dangerous this sport is, an ex-colleague of mine broke his right arm while winning his first race competitive race. Undaunted he took part two years later and won again - but this time he broke his left arm. To rub salt into his wound, his cheese was stolen from the back of the ambulance. :smirk2:
The races themselves are an ancient fertility rite that goes back for a few hundred years and it’s a tradition that the young men of the village demonstrate their fertile prowess to the maidens in this fashion. I too have taken part way back in the 80’s (after consuming close to a gallon of local cider) but was fortunate to escape with bruising and a week-long headache!
But, for those of you that remain unconvinced of its dangerous nature, there are a few links I’d welcome you to check out including:
Videos from this years races held two weeks ago - Realplayer required
Videos of the races from 2006 - Realplayer required
Join in the fun with a helmet webcam - Realplayer required
The carnage of 1997 can be seen in these videos - Quicktime required (possibly the best video of them all)
And a YouTube version of the 2005 races
For those without access to the videos I leave you with a few photos of the mayhem…enjoy!
