German YouTuber Completes Third Consecutive Title for Capturing England’s Most Dangerous Cheese

Disclaimer: This article is based on actual news from the real world – honestly! However, it has been sprinkled with a healthy dose of satire.

BROCKWORTH, England — Cooper’s Hill, an English gradient that exists at roughly the angle a ladder leans against a house, hosted its annual unofficial cheese-rolling competition Monday under bank-holiday sun pushing 86°F. For the third consecutive year, the event was won by Tom Kopke, a 24-year-old YouTuber from Munich whose ongoing dominance of Britain’s most British footrace has begun to alarm Britain to the point of becoming an international incident.

The race begins when an 8-pound wheel of Double Gloucester is released from the top of a 200-yard slope with a 1-in-2 gradient. Competitors then follow it, theoretically by running, in practice by performing what witnesses describe as “tumbling out of control.” The first person across the line at the bottom takes home the cheese. 

Kopke, who became the men’s downhill champion in 2024, retained the title in 2025 and entered this year’s race as the heavy favorite. He executed what officials are calling a textbook descent, in the sense that several of the textbooks involved appeared to be airborne. Kopke crossed the finish line a half-step ahead of British Guinness World Record holder Chris Anderson, who had come out of retirement for the express purpose of stopping this from happening again, and did not stop it from happening again.

“It is a beautiful tradition,” Kopke told reporters, holding the cheese in the way one holds a small grateful pet. He explained that he had first encountered the event as a viral video, traveled from Bavaria to compete, won, and discovered that filming yourself winning a cheese race down a near-cliff is one million times more engaging than filming yourself doing almost anything else. He has been back every year since. His subscriber count has been back every year since, too.

Anderson, the man Kopke beat, holds 23 cheese-rolling titles dating back to 2005. He retired several years ago, citing what he politely described as “gravity.” He un-retired in 2026 after Kopke publicly invited him to a rematch. Anderson now joins a long English tradition of accepting a German challenge in a continental conflict and finishing a half-step behind. He was gracious in defeat, congratulated Kopke at the finish, and made eye contact with the cheese in a way that one bystander described as “deeply personal.”

The women’s race was won by 20-year-old London university student Ava Sender Logan, who provided the BBC with the single most representative quote in the event’s history. “It felt quite long coming down,” she said, “and then I hit my head.” She followed this up with “I’m down — that’s what matters,” which is not only an accurate summary of how one wins this race but also the unofficial motto of the race’s medical response strategy and English bank-holiday culture in general.

Foreign competitors continue to dominate. Dutch racer Niels Wennemars and French entrant Alix Heugas both took home cheese in additional categories, leaving British competitors in the strange position of being out-Britished at their own demonstration of national derangement. Locals reportedly cheered them anyway, on the theory that anyone willing to fall down Cooper’s Hill on purpose is, for that day at least, an honorary Gloucestershireman.

St John Ambulance officially withdrew its medical cover in 2012, citing the event’s reclassification as “unmanaged” and “uninsurable,” words that could also apply to both SpaceX and Tesla’s driverless car technology. This year, the injured were attended to instead by friends, family, off-duty paramedics in the crowd who had apparently forgotten it was their day off, and a 200-yard pile of strangers who had also fallen down the same hill.

Historical injury records remain impressive. Across the modern history of the event, participants have sustained broken legs, broken ankles, broken arms, broken collarbones, multiple concussions, and one verified case of being struck by lightning, which is the only injury at Cooper’s Hill that cannot be reasonably blamed on the hill. There have been no recorded deaths, a statistic Gloucestershire officials cite the way other counties cite “fastest broadband” or “best Christmas market.”

Kopke departed with the trophy cheese, which he plans to take back to Munich. It is unclear what he will do with it. It is also unclear, this far into his run, what England plans to do about him. A British competitor returning the title to British soil now requires either an injury to Kopke or a sudden interest in cheese rolling from a Norwegian skier. Anderson, when asked whether he would attempt a fourth-time un-retirement next year, paused, looked back up Cooper’s Hill, and said only, “We’ll see what the doctors say.” It is not clear which doctors he meant, given that there are still none at the event.