In 2023 Canadian Delaney Irving won the women’s race at Cooper’s Hill and only found out when she woke up in the medical tent, having crossed the finish line unconscious. This episode digs into the physics of Brockworth’s spring bank holiday tradition: a 50 percent gradient where running is impossible, uneven pasture full of rabbit holes, and a seven-to-nine-pound wheel of Double Gloucester in a wooden casing that ricochets downhill at up to 70 miles per hour.

We cover the cheese maker Diana Smart, who supplied the event from 1988 until her death and got a police liability warning at age 86, the 16 injuries of 1993, the withdrawal of St John Ambulance in 2012, the 15,000-person crowd crisis of 2009, the cancelled 2010 event, the failed 2011 ticketing plan and the 2013 foam cheese that floated so slowly an Australian caught it midair. We also explore the 1836 first written record, competing grazing-rights and pagan-fertility origin theories, and the champions from Chris Anderson’s 23 wins to German YouTuber Tom Kopke’s three straight titles and the first all-foreign sweep of the men’s races in 2026.

• Why you cannot catch the cheese and only have to reach the bottom first, alive
• How every attempt to regulate, sanitize or corporatize the event backfired
• The counterintuitive skill of relaxing while absorbing violent impacts
• Flo Early, Lucy Townsend and the women’s record on the same brutal slope
• Terry Pratchett, Netflix, a Royal Mail stamp and Animal Crossing: the event’s global footprint