‘I’m going to get his ass’: YouTuber beats all-time cheese-rolling champion

It was billed as the great cheese-off; a helter-skelter, bone-jarring downhill race between the all-time champ and a young upstart. After the hype and hyperbole, youth won out, as the 24-year-old German YouTuber Tom Kopke beat 38-year-old local hero Chris Anderson at the annual cheese-rolling event in the English West Country. In his post-race interviews at the foot of Cooper’s Hill in Gloucestershire, Kopke declared: “If that hill is hell, I’m the devil.” Anderson, tempted out of retirement by the challenge from Kopke, had taken the lead at first, but Kopke said: “I thought: ‘I’m going to get his ass.’” He duly did, winning his third roll in three years , his prize the round of double Gloucester that he and his fellow competitors had chased down the horribly steep hill. Asked how he had prepared, he said: “Shut off your brain and go for it.” The pair embraced at the bottom and Anderson, who came second, admitted he had felt a little scared at the top and knew the game was up when he glimpsed Kopke haring past him. Kopke with his prize after the downhill. Photograph: Isabel Infantes/Reuters Anderson with his Guinness World Records certificate for most wins overall. Photograph: Jacob King/PA The origins of the event are lost in the mists of time. There are written records of it going back almost 200 years – but Anderson, a ground worker who grew up in the village of Brockworth, home to the event, and has won 23 times, thinks it may have started about 600 years ago. …