Christians and lions
by Brian Kimberling
[ places - june 05 ]
I spent the afternoon of May 30 in a tree at Cooper's Hill in Gloucestershire, watching the traditional cheese-rolling races. I have never seen anything more brutal, or encountered such a bloodthirsty mob. If you want to experience these races yourself, anywhere and at any time of year, just take 5,000 of your friends to the nearest motorway and cheer every time someone gets hit by a car.
Still more disturbing were the discrepancies of media coverage on the day after. The Gloucester Echo led with IT'S MAYHEM AT CHEESEROLL, while The Guardian proclaimed “Downhill cheese race goes smoothly”. The Gloucester Echo crowed that 26 were injured, while The Guardian cited only three hospitalisations.
The hill is about 200 m (218 yards) (Guardian) or 300 yards (274 meters) (Gloucester Echo) in length with a steep gradient (1.2 according to The Guardian; 1.3 according to the Gloucester Echo). Whatever the precise measurements, it's steep. Nobody fails to finish the race - if you break your leg at the top you still go all the way down because there is no way to stop. There were about 15 to 20 contestants in each race with at least 2 stretchered off after each.
A BBC reporter captured the mood exactly:
"Cooper's Hill was something akin to a Roman coliseum as the crowd began eagerly chanting 'Roll that Cheese' and baying for the first race to get underway. You could sense the excitement as the 'Gladiators' lined up at the top of the hill, awaiting the signal from the master of ceremonies."
Some friends at the bottom of the hill said that bodies crossing the finish line were: 1) 10 and 12 feet off the ground, and 2) moving at 20-25 mph, and 3) appeared to have five legs and four arms and six heads.
I was at the top of the hill in what another friend called a yob tree - if you shook it you could have filled four football stadiums with what fell out. I could see a lot of the mad cartwheeling downslope but I couldn't see the stretchers, ambulances, etc. However, I could hear the comments of my neighbours with better views, ranging from "He broke a leg, look!" to "She's gone all floppy, like!"
After the races the two-time ladies' champ, New Zealander Dione Carter, said to the Gloucester Echo: "It was very scary, much more than I remember last time - much tougher. I had a few nasty tumbles. Maybe that's because I hadn't drunk as much alcohol today as I did last year. It's sheer luck if you win, but despite how it looks it's great fun."
But the same lady said, in The Guardian: "This was a lot tougher than last year. I had a few nasty tumbles. It just seems sheer luck if you win, but despite how it looks it is great fun."
Why was the reference to alcohol excised? What impression was the Guardian reporter trying to give? Why?
Other publications followed a similar pattern. The Independent ran a small photo, and The Times a larger one. They seemed to share The Guardian's conviction that this was just traditional British quirkiness, like Morris dancing - not especially notable in the shadow of the French constitutional referendum. Down in the tabloids, however, the bloodlust was obvious. The Daily Mail reveled in injuries, displaying online a Press Association photo of a cheese roller supported by medics and bleeding from mouth, nose, forehead, and eyes. The tradition continues, notes the Daily Mail, "despite an injury rate that would make Jonny Wilkinson proud... We English are a sturdy lot however and we have... welcomed the tradition..."
Ultimately it was the local paper, the Gloucester Echo, which seemed to report with the greatest accuracy - by listing, with relish, each injury individually. "Five people were taken to hospital with broken ankles, arms and a damaged spine."
I wondered if the reporter licked his fingers after typing that. He continued:
"One competitor was knocked unconscious and continued to roll down the hill until first aiders picked him up... One unsuspecting woman in the crowd was knocked over by a bouncing 9lb Double Gloucester. A young boy had to be treated by paramedics after he stumbled racing up the hill and injured his leg. A woman in her 20s was treated for a suspected broken arm. The last of four races had to be put back for 40 minutes because both ambulances were packed taking casualties to hospital."
The Gloucester Echo has done the inverse of The Guardian, overplaying its hand: surely that word “packed” is unnecessary, like the obsessive itemisation of casualties which precedes it.
The Guardian reporter, meanwhile, concluded his report with a note about vegan protesters who feel discriminated against due to the use of cheese. I salute his eye for a good news angle, and yet... Twenty-six injuries? Five hospitalised? Spine damage? Was the Guardian reporter even there? Or was the Gloucester Echo just making things up?
Perhaps the sheer mania of the afternoon inhibited accurate reporting (by everyone but the BBC correspondent). For whatever reason, the British press was clearly schizophrenic about the cheese races. Perhaps, confronted in this late age by an ancestral paint-yourself-blue barbarity, the various factions of the press showed their own true colours: the right-wing pandering to its readers' most reprehensible cravings, and the liberal establishment revealing how deeply out of touch it is with real people.
