Unusual Sports: 2026 Cheese Rolling Championship!
By Prof Dr Ian Blackshaw
On 25 May 2026, Tom Kopke, a German ‘You Tuber’ from Munich and known, online, as ‘Tooleko’, has beaten Chris Anderson, a local twenty-three times champion and Guinness World Record holder, in the first race of the annual cheese rolling championship on Cooper's Hill in Brockworth, in Gloucestershire, England.
As such, Kopke has retained his title as cheese rolling champion for the third year in a row.
On winning, Kopke remarked that:
"It's everyone's race and you have just got to give your best, and the best man wins."
In temperatures of 30 degrees Celsius, thousands of people watched competitors from all over the world chase a 7lb (3kg) wheel of Double Gloucester cheese - which can reach speeds of up to 70 miles per hour (112.6 kilometres per hour) - down the 1:2 gradient slope.
There were seven races in total, and each winner was awarded with a wheel of cheese.
The championship has been celebrated for centuries and is thought to have its origins in a heathen festival to celebrate the return of spring.
The first written record of cheese rolling appeared in ‘Berrow's Worcester Journal’ on 9 June 1836.
Nowadays, the event is classified as an extreme sport and considered as one of the toughest downhill races in the United Kingdom.
Prof Dr Ian Blackshaw may be contacted by e-mail at ‘
