Germany, and particularly Bavaria, is more commonly known for Bratwrust and Bier than cheese, but one young man from Munich is willing to risk life and limb for a wheel of good curd.
Tom Kopke, a 24-year-old German YouTuber made headlines this week when he claimed victory for the third year in a row in a famous annual cheese race.
The Cooper’s Hill Cheese-Rolling and Wake is a long-standing tradition that takes place in Brockworth, England and is said to date back to 1836. The main event consists of a wheel of cheese being sent down a 45-degree slope, with 'runners' barrelling down the course to try and be the first to catch it. The winner then gets to take home a seven pound wheel of Double Gloucester cheese.
Due to the high risk of serious injury, the official race event was discontinued in 2010. But the event continues to be held unofficially, which is why Kopke and others like him continue to throw themselves down Cooper’s hill each year.
This year Kopke was up against the event’s 23-time champion Chris Anderson, who had previously endured torn muscles, sprained ankles and bruised kidneys in defence of his title. Yet the young German prevailed.
He was quoted as saying that the cheese he’s won will “taste the best” of all the cheese he’s had. He'd better hope the hardworking cheese makers in his home state of Bavaria don't hear that.
@zeit Beim berühmten Käserennen in der englischen Grafschaft Gloucestershire konnte der Münchner Tom Kopke (24) seinen Titel verteidigen. Zum dritten Mal in Folge gewann er das traditionelle Bergabrennen, bei dem Dutzende Menschen einem rollenden Käselaib hinterherjagen. Der Wettbewerb hat eine lange Tradition. Eine Annahme ist, dass das Rennen auf ein heidnisches Frühlingsfest zurückgehen könnte. Das Käserennen wird jährlich im englischen Brockworth veranstaltet – der Ort liegt südlich der Stadt Birmingham und westlich von Oxford. Die offizielle Veranstaltung wurde vor einigen Jahren, obwohl Tausende Besucher gekommen waren, aus Sicherheitsgründen eingestellt. Seitdem wird das Rennen inoffiziell veranstaltet. Der BBC zufolge ziehen sich Menschen bei dem Wettbewerb immer wieder Verletzungen zu. #käse #rennen #england #sport ♬ Originalton - DIE ZEIT
Will Germany see a Grand Slam tennis champion?
Meanwhile, in more conventional sports, another German athlete is turning heads at the French Open – currently underway on the red clay in Paris.
Following the stunning second-round collapse of World No. 1 Jannik Sinner, Germany’s Alexander Zverev has emerged as the betting favourite to lift the trophy.
Assuming Zverev wins, which is a big 'if', he would become the country's first male Grand Slam singles champion since Boris Becker dominated the sport in the eighties and nineties, culminating in his final Major victory at the 1996 Australian Open.
(This column was written on Friday afternoon, before Zverev's match against Frenchman Quentin Halys, so the quest may already have come to an end by the time you read this).
Despite the country's three-decade wait for a major men's singles title, Zverev would be a deeply polarising champion in Germany.
His career remains clouded by allegations of domestic abuse from two former partners. A recent criminal trial in Berlin was dropped following a €200,000 out-of-court settlement with no admission of guilt. Previously, an ATP (Association of Tennis) investigation had found there was "insufficient evidence" to back up the allegations.
Seen on the streets:
Can you decode the message seen on the sticker above?
If you regularly consume German language media – be it from traditional news outlets or on the social apps – you've probably come across this phrase.
We won't type it out in full here, as we'd rather avoid any possibility of being criminally investigated. But let's just say it's a German phrase aimed at a certain chancellor, whose name rhymes with 'Herz', and which suggests that he "licks eggs".
The phrase also appeared in a report by The Local about a student protest against Germany's new military service rules.
An 18-year-old demonstrator in Berlin reportedly did face a police investigation on "suspicion of defamation" for carrying a sign that displayed the phrase.
Of course, news about the story immediately spread far and wide, giving the phrase more attention than it ever would have had if the police hadn't bothered to confiscate the poster and initiate an investigation.
The Local previously sent an inquiry to both the federal and Berlin police to ask about what such an investigation entails and where exactly the line between satire and defamation lies.
The federal police referred to the state authority, and the Berlin police did not respond.
In his political career, Chancellor Friedrich Merz has been involved with more than his fair share of arguably absurd defamation investigations. His office was recently made to reveal that it had initiated investigations in approximately 300 of these cases. The most famous involved a man who faced the scrutiny of the public prosecutor's office for posting a picture of Merz as Pinocchio on Facebook.
The above sticker was seen on a pole on a street in Nuremberg's Gostenhof neighbourhood, which was ranked among Germany's 'trendiest neighbourhoods' in a survey we covered last year.
The sticker appears to be printed by Junge Welt, a Marxist daily newspaper originally founded in the Soviet sector of Berlin in 1947.
With reporting by Tom Pugh.
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