A 19-year-old woman from Canada was knocked out while competing in England’s annual Cheese Rolling event on Monday, but won the women’s race anyway.
“I remember hitting my head, I remember it hurting and then I remember waking up in the (medical) tent,” Delaney Irving, from Vancouver Island, recalled of her horrifying-looking fall to Greatest Hits Radio Gloucester.
Irving, who was unconscious as she tumbled over the finishing line, visited a hospital as a precautionary measure.
Irving was one of the hundreds of people from across the world who, across multiple races, threw themselves down the steep Cooper’s Hill in Brockworth, near Gloucester, in pursuit of a 7-pound wheel of Double Gloucester cheese.
The tradition reportedly dates back almost 200 years, although some historians say it’s more than three times older.
This year, recent dry weather made the ground unusually hard, reported Gloucestershire Live.
Irving’s mother, Krista Endrizzi, told Global News from her home in Nanaimo that she hadn’t known her daughter was going to compete.
“She looked like a rag doll,” she said of the “disturbing” footage of the fall. “And when she landed she wasn’t moving. It was not every parent’s dream. But she’s okay, so that’s all that matters.”
Irving has suggested she’ll defend her title in 2024. Her mother is less than keen, though. “I don’t want her to do it again. We’ll watch,” Endrizzi told Global News. “I’ll be restraining her.”
See more photos from the 2023 Cheese Rolling event here:
