A German YouTuber Won the Cheese Rolling Title for the Third Year. The Hill Is Hell, He Says.

Every year, on a steep hill in Gloucestershire, England, a small group of adults chase a wheel of Double Gloucester cheese down a near-vertical slope at bone-shattering speeds. The event has no prize money, no insurance, and no good reason to exist. It is, objectively, the greatest annual tradition in the Western world. And this year, a 24-year-old German YouTuber named Tom Kopke — known online as Tooleko — walked away with his third consecutive championship.

Let me repeat that: a YouTuber from Germany travelled to England, hurled himself down a murderously steep hill after a dairy product, and beat a local Guinness World Record holder for the third year running. And then he said the line of the year: "If that hill is hell, I'm the devil."

Cooper's Hill is about 200 yards of pure, uncompromising terror. The gradient is so insane that most competitors don't run — they tumble. They ragdoll. They bounce off the turf and each other, landing in a tangled heap at the bottom while spectators pray nobody's broken their neck this year. The cheese itself — a 7–9 lb wheel of Double Gloucester — gets a one-second head start, and then the field of maniacs launches after it. First one to cross the bottom line wins the cheese. Simple. Suicidal. Perfect.

This year's race drew a crowd of several thousand and a media scrum that would embarrass a royal wedding. The big storyline was the comeback of Chris Anderson, the 38-year-old local who holds a Guinness World Record for most cheese rolling wins. He'd retired, but the Kopke challenge lured him back. Anderson actually took the early lead — but Kopke closed the gap with the kind of reckless, full-commitment descent that separates legends from cautionary tales.

"I thought: 'I'm going to get his ass.'" — Tom Kopke, on chasing down Chris Anderson

Kopke crossed the line first. Anderson was gracious in defeat. A spectator from Kopke's race was taken to hospital — because of course someone was. Local authorities have been calling for the event to be banned or regulated for years, citing the strain on ambulance services. And every year, thousands of people show up to prove that cheese is absolutely worth a trip to A&E.

There's a beautiful irony here. The British cheese-rolling is one of the most English things that exists — a tradition stretching back centuries, held on a bank holiday Monday in a sleepy Cotswolds village. And for three years running, it's been owned by a German YouTuber. The tabloids don't know whether to be furious or impressed. I'm choosing impressed.

Kopke doesn't just win — he embodies the spirit of the thing. The cheese rolling is absurd, painful, and completely irrational. It's a middle finger to risk assessment and health and safety. It's people voluntarily launching themselves down a hill for a block of dairy they could buy at Tesco for a tenner. And that's exactly why it matters. In a world of optimised, sterilised, risk-averse everything, Cooper's Hill is a beautiful, stupid, glorious holdout.

The cheese is only the excuse. The real prize is the chaos.