The World Pie Eating Championships скачать в хорошем качестве

The World Pie Eating Championships

Competition in Wigan, it turns out, can be a surprisingly cutthroat affair — particularly when pastry is involved. The annual pie-eating contest is so fiercely contested that organisers have had to outlaw gravy on the sensible grounds that it made the pies too easy to swallow. Apparently, when lubricated with gravy, the pies simply slid down, which, while marvellous for digestion, was deemed unsporting. Incredibly, there were even instances of competitors dosing themselves with cough syrup to grease the path further, a practice now strictly forbidden. It’s that sort of inventive cheating that makes you realise: in Britain, we don’t do warlike passion — we do creative rule-bending with condiments. But make no mistake, this is not an event for dilettantes or those who merely like pie. The difference between glory and humiliation can be measured in milliseconds, as contestants battle to devour a 12-centimetre-wide, 3.5-centimetre-deep steak-and-kidney pie with the urgency of a man trying to outrun his own digestion. The tradition itself harks back to Wigan’s curious nickname, “pie eaters,” a label dating from the early 20th century when local workers broke ranks with striking miners — an act for which they were, in the timeless fashion of British mockery, forever defined by their dinner. This year, seventeen hopefuls took up the challenge, but it was local hero Martin Appleton-Clare who triumphed, reclaiming his crown after first winning it in 2012. At 37, Appleton-Clare proved once again that true greatness can come in the form of a man demolishing a pie in 38.2 seconds. It wasn’t quite enough to topple the world record — a blistering 23.91 seconds, set by Neil Collier in 2010 — but it did confirm that, in Wigan at least, ambition continues to be served with a side of pastry. #funny #food