The Cheese Stands Alone

Back in his days of stand-up comedy, Bill Cosby did a great routine on golf. He talked about the frustration of watching the game on TV, trying to locate a little white dot as it flies through a screen of blue sky. I can still hear his puzzled description of playing the game, where he’d say, “You had the ball right there in your hand, but then you went and hit it away! Now you have to go get it!” It’s the sort of “play on play” I thought of when I heard about cheese rolling.

Ready for racing!

Humans thrive on competitions and we’ve come up with some weird ones over the years.  Wife-carrying.  Fruitcake tosses.  Pole vault.  Or just about anything from the Scottish Highland Games (caber toss, anyone?) But the Cooper’s Hill Cheese-Rolling and Wake may be the weirdest one of them all.  Seriously, who willingly signs up to sprint down a seriously steep hill, in hot pursuit of a rolling, bouncing wheel of cheese, where the grand prize is… the cheese itself?

Here’s a video of one of this year’s races at Cooper’s Hill (near Gloucester in England).  I dare your jaw not to drop as you watch these contestants spill into view at the top of the hill.  Notice the leaders have already left their feet and are literally falling down the mountain.  It reminds me of the ad where the tire goes over the cliff, starts rolling down a steep incline, and then bounces high off the rocks and terrain as it gathers speed before disappearing below. 

The cheese really does stand alone at Cooper’s Hill because it’s never actually caught.  A rolling wheel of Double Gloucester is simply too fast.  Instead, the winner is the runner (“faller?”) who makes it to the bottom first.  Just about every participant sustains injuries.  In last week’s running, with the usual nod to the hospital emergency room, the winner of one of the women’s races knocked herself unconscious just as she crossed the finish line.  Revived in a nearby recovery tent, only then did she realize she’d won.

Cooper’s Hill

Organizers expect “damage to participants” at Cooper’s Hill.  A first-aid service is at the ready, as are several ambulances.  A local rugby club volunteers to be “catchers”, positioned on the hill to rescue anyone who finds themself out of control.  In a quote from the Sydney Morning Herald (yes, this event gets global attention), a participant described the race as “twenty young men chasing a cheese off a cliff and tumbling 200 yards to the bottom, where they are scraped up by paramedics and packed off to hospital.”  Sounds like a blast, doesn’t it?

Here’s my favorite quote about cheese-rolling.  Matt Crolla, who won one of this year’s men’s races, was asked how he trains for the event.  He admitted, “I don’t think you can train for it, can you?  It’s just being an idiot”.  That about sums it up in my book.

I tried to think of similar sports to cheese-rolling and drew a total blank.  Golf, shot put, and javelin all start by sending an object on its way (like a rolling cheese) but in none of them do you race after it.  Then I thought about hoop rolling.  Remember that game?  No, you don’t – you’re too young!  Nobody rolls hoops anymore! But there was a time when kids did just that, using a short stick to propel a wooden hoop along the sidewalk, trying to keep it upright as long as possible.  Sounds about as boring as cheese-rolling is dangerous.

In the timeless nursery rhyme The Farmer in the Dell, one of early lyrics includes “the child takes a nurse”. Several lines after that, “the cheese stands alone”.  Maybe the song was a nod to cheese-rolling.  After all, most participants are going to need a nurse whether or not they win this crazy race.  Maybe even a wake.

Some content sourced from the CBS News article, “Women wins chaotic UK cheese race…”, and Wikipedia, “the free encyclopedia”.

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Author: Dave

Five hundred posts would suggest I have something to say… This blog was born from a desire to elevate the English language, highlighting eloquent words from days gone by. The stories I share are snippets of life itself, and each comes with a bonus: a dusted-off word I hope you’ll go on to use more often. Read “Deutschland-ish Improvements” to learn about my backyard European wish list. Try “Slush Fun” for the throwback years of the 7-Eleven convenience store. Or drink in "Iced Coffee" to discover the plight of the rural French cafe. On the lighter side, read "Late Night Racquet Sports" for my adventures with our latest moth invasion. As Walt Whitman said, “That the powerful play goes on, and you may contribute a verse.” Here then, my verse. Welcome to Life In A Word.

24 thoughts on “The Cheese Stands Alone”

    1. Jon looks strong enough for the wife-carrying, but I’m with you Lyssy. When you see the way some of those women are carried, you have to wonder what grand prize makes people do this.

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  6. I didn’t know about this cheese rolling sport. I’d rather eat a slice of the cheese on a cracker, perhaps with a glass of wine, than roll the stuff, but to each is wacko own.

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    1. Whoa, Margy. I just watched a helmet-cam video of the start of the bike race. Dozens of bikes went down within the first hundred meters. These people are even crazier than the cheese chasers!

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  9. Well Dave, I have to agree with Matt Crolla’s training regimen comment. I have never heard of that sport and because I am a bit of a germaphobe, I’d say “eww” as no amount of wax on that cheese wheel could keep that cheese from getting dirty so I would not be slapping it on a cracker later. Now I feel old because that is a more-modern version of the “The Farmer in the Dell” than I remember. I clicked the video and I was doing okay, humming along until “the farmer takes a wife” was missing because now we have a sweet “farmerette” instead. 🙂

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    1. Heaven help us, Linda – I didn’t catch the “update”. Can’t they leave anything alone? I’m grateful we lived, by and large, in a generation where we had more important things to worry about.

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  10. That description of cheese-rolling from the Sydney Herald had me laughing out loud. I suppose this sport proves the lengths (of idiocy) we’ll go to in order to fit in with the crowd! If one MUST roll a round object across the ground, add a few wickets, two posts, and a mallet. We’ll call it croquet. Injuries will be rare–unless someone throws their mallet!

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    1. Some of the “social clubs” down here in South Carolina play serious croquet. I’m inclined to make jokes about the game same as you Nancy (because I was never very good at it) but I best make sure I know who I’m talking to first!

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  11. There might be something that I would chase down a hill but a wheel of cheese isn’t one of them. I recently saw an infographic that counted Wisconsin as among the top tier of states for annual alcohol consumption. If they don’t do this in Wisconsin, where there is plenty of both beer and cheese, then it is truly crazy.

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    1. You have me curious, J P, and maybe I’ll do the research to find out. It might not be cheese-chasing but you just know WI has some crazy competitions involving its most famous export.

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