Pub racers prove they can handle their beer (kegs)
IT weighs 50kg, you have to lug it up 1.3miles of moorland and at the end you don’t even get to drink any of it.
That was the challenge facing the competitors in the first World Beer Keg Carrying Championships in Littleborough on Saturday.
Fourteen men and two teams took part in the gruelling event on Blackstone Edge.
It saw them race between the Moorcock Inn and the White House pub – a climb of 500m – carrying a Marston’s beer keg filled with water.
John Hunter won the individual event in a time of just over 17mins, while staff from Team Precision UK took the honours in team category.
For their efforts they were presented with a 5l-keg of Devil’s Backbone beer.
Organiser Brian Gumbley, from the Always With a Smile activities group, hopes one day the quirky event will come to rival the Gravy Wrestling Championship in Stacksteads or the World Black Pudding Throwing Championship in Ramsbottom.
He said: “There is nowhere else doing anything like this.
“Hopefully in four or five years time it will be a massive event and raise loads of money for a local charity.
“The best example is the Gravy Wrestling Championships, which started out in a car park in Wigan and now thousands of people go to the Rose n’ Bowl to watch it. This year Sky Sports even turned up.
“We had 14 lunatics and two teams taking part. The winner John Hunter won the coal carrying championships and he’s been on TV doing challenges with the SAS and he says it is the toughest thing he’s done.
“We couldn’t have asked for a better event and everybody got back safely which is the main thing.
“It was well-attended and there were quite a few spectators outside the White House cheering everybody home.” ●●John Hunter celebrates his victory in the World Beer Keg Carrying Championship with Team Precision UK members, who won the team title