In years past, Chris Anderson has endured bruised kidneys, a severe concussion and a broken ankle to win the annual Double Gloucester cheese-rolling race. This year, it took a torn calf muscle for him to notch a 22nd career victory.
The 30-year-old star cheese chaser overtook Stephen Gyde in the all-time cheese race record books with the first of two wins this week, as BBC reported, and the calf injury was hardly a deterrent of celebration.
"I'm happy (and) I've got nothing to prove now," he said, per BBC.
Even broken bones probably wouldn't have changed his perspective, because if the annual cheese race -- officially known as Cooper's Hill Cheese-Rolling and Wake -- had a motto, it'd be, "Compete At Your Own Risk." There's really no other way to do the event justice, as it challenges hundreds of people to chase a rolling 8-pound wheel of Gloucester cheese down a steep and often slippery hill in Gloucestershire, England. The first person to catch the wheel wins the race and is then awarded the cheese, because nothing says "all your broken body parts are worth it" like the tradition of lugging home eight pounds of Gloucester.
Still, people flock to the event every year. And every year, on that same 1:2-gradient hill (translation: steep!) in South West England, you'll find those people careening, bouncing, flailing and sprinting down the hills in hopes of nabbing the cheese and maybe, just maybe, mustering enough strength to challenge Anderson's record and do it 22 times over again.