German YouTuber wins Cooper’s Hill cheese roll for third straight year

A German YouTuber tightened his grip on one of Britain’s strangest traditions on Monday, May 25, 2026, winning the men’s race at Cooper’s Hill Cheese-Rolling for the third year in a row as crowds lined the steep slope near Gloucester, Gloucestershire. Tom Kopke outran and outslid a field of competitors chasing a wheel of Double Gloucester cheese down the 180-meter, 200-yard hill in baking heat after a spell of dry weather left the course harder, slower and more dangerous.

The women’s race went to France’s Alix Heugas, who raced in a mouse onesie and emerged from the chaos as one of the day’s biggest draws. The annual contest, staged at Cooper’s Hill in Brockworth on the spring bank holiday, continues to pull in contestants and spectators from across Britain and far beyond, with the race’s absurdity part of its enduring appeal. The spectacle is simple enough to explain and difficult enough to survive: launch after a rolling cheese, then try to stay upright on a slope so steep that falling is often faster than running.

Kopke’s latest win completed a hat trick of successive victories and reinforced the event’s unusual place in modern sport and local culture. Chris Anderson, a former 23-time champion and Guinness World Record holder for the competition, said he was scared at the top and watched Kopke pull ahead during the race. Kopke said after the finish that he was happy to have won again and left open the possibility of returning in 2027.

The event’s history gives the chaos a deeper pull. The official cheese-rolling site says the tradition may be hundreds of years old, while documentary evidence shows that cheese rolling on Cooper’s Hill was already an old custom in the early 1800s. Some accounts place it back at least to 1836. That mix of folklore, regional identity and risk is exactly what keeps the contest alive, even as Tewkesbury Borough Council has previously warned that the race is unsafe because it has no official organizer, no submitted safety documentation and no public safety plan. The council has also said it does not want to end the tradition. For all the warnings, the hill still delivers the same annual bargain to Britain and the world: a dangerous descent, a loud crowd and a local ritual that refuses to become ordinary.