A Colorado Springs daredevil chased a faux wheel of double Gloucester cheese down a steep English hill Monday to win the world-famous Cooper’s Hill Cheese Rolling and Wake, a race no American had ever won.
Kenny Rackers, 27, won his heat of the now-renegade cheese chase, which was officially canceled after the 2009 competition because of health and safety concerns.
“It feels great,” said Rackers, an Army veteran and former Arena Football player who now sells real estate in Colorado Springs. “I trained a long time for this and got hurt on the hill practicing. But I came to win, and that’s what I did.”
when he did a project in college about obscure sports.
He told the Independent that he trained for the race four days a week, doing everything from sprints and box jumps to flipping tractor tires. He also studied race films.
“I came 3,000 or 4,000 miles just for this race,” after the competition. “I put it on my bucket list, and today it was to win — and that’s what I did.”
Rackers wore an American-flavored stars-and-stripes speed suit for the race.
The contest dates to at least the early 19th century. Traditionally, an 8-pound piece of double Gloucester was chased about 650 feet down Cooper’s Hill in Brockworth, northwest of London.
After more than 15,000 people tried to watch the race in 2009, police shut down the event.
But ad-hoc races continued, with brave souls chasing a genuine wheel of cheese until this year, when 86-year-old cheesemaker Diana Smart, who had provided the double Gloucester for decades, was warned by police that she might be held liable for any injuries in the races.
This year, organizers replaced the cheese with a foam fake.
