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It is as much about control as out-and-out speed. Bravery is important – but so is an element of careful preparation and planning.
Over the years, Chris Anderson, the record-breaking cheese-chasing king of Cooper’s Hill in Gloucestershire, has seen it all. Lots of wins but also losses and injury.
Now having stepped back from the annual madcap, helter-skelter race, Anderson is taking on the role of elder statesman, happy to pass on his experience to anyone who’d like to listen.
“It’s risky, there’s no doubt about it,” he reflected after the latest edition of the event this half-term week. “You’ve just got to be able to try and stay on your feet as long as possible and lean backwards so you can stay in control of yourself.
“Obviously you need to be fast but overall it’s better to stay in control rather than going flat out.” If you fall, the best bet is an army roll – Anderson used to serve in the British military so he was good at that – and then back on your feet as quickly as possible.
He reckons mid-20s is the ideal age for a cheese-roller. “Fit but with a bit of experience as well.” And, of course, you need to have the right mindset. “You’ve got to be someone who enjoys an adrenaline rush.”
Anderson, who won the event – in which a round of double gloucester cheese is pursued down the steep incline – 23 times, earning himself a place in Guinness World Records, suggests that anyone wanting to enter should visit the site before the day itself.
Because on the hill, perhaps as in life itself, people have to find their own way. Anderson, 37, now a ground worker, had his preferred route, avoiding a tricky hollow. “I strongly advise visiting the hill before you make the decision to get up there and do it. So many people turn up on the day wanting to run it, then look at it and say: ‘No way.’”
Anderson grew up in the village of Brockworth, where the event takes place. “So it’s always been a tradition in my family. I always saw it happening.”
When he was in his teens he and his mates used to go up the hill from time to time and, as boys will, push each other down. “We were just having a laugh in our holidays.”
At the age of 16 in 2004 he entered the event proper and came second. “I thought I’ll do it again and win it.” He did just that the following year.
Though the actual race went well, the aftermath was less successful.
“I broke my ankle celebrating at the bottom. I jumped up to celebrate and I fell in a hole.” He recovered, came back and kept winning, becoming something of a local hero. His only other serious injury was bruising to his kidneys in 2011.
After winning his 23rd race in 2022, he decided to retire. “I broke the record so there was no need to carry on really.”
Nobody is sure when the event began but many locals say it goes back hundreds of years. “I think it is something like 600 years,” Anderson said. “Perhaps it was an old pagan ritual to bring good luck for the harvest.”
He has seen cheese rolling grow in popularity into something of a global event which attracts media attention from across the world. “That’s been down to the internet. The internet has made it huge.”
Ahead of this week’s event, the Tewkesbury borough safety advisory group declared the event unsafe, expressing concern about how emergency services would be able to respond if there was a major incident with multiple casualties at the spot, which is hard to access.
An air ambulance and five land ambulances attended this time after injuries and two people went to hospital.
“Obviously it is a dangerous sport, one of those extreme sports,” said Anderson. “But I wouldn’t say it’s any more dangerous than motocross or mountain biking or anything like that.”
Winners this year included a Gloucester man, a London woman and two international contestants, one from Germany, the other from New Zealand.
Anderson said he wasn’t going to be tempted out of retirement. Ironically, he is nursing a running injury. “I did a marathon last year. I didn’t train for it, I just went for it. I did an OK time but I just overdid it and I’ve got a hip flexor injury.”
He is a father of three and one of his teenage children fancies a go at it. “I’ve tried to push him away from doing it. I think he’s just trying to prove himself to me. When he gets to 18 it’ll be up to him but I’d rather he didn’t do it.”
