The world pie-eating championships proved once again to be a controversy-strewn battleground on Tuesday as the sole woman competitor stormed out and officials banned gravy after rumors of doping with cough mixture.
Drama also engulfed Harry’s Bar in Wigan, in northwest England, the contest’s venue, as its owner, Tony Callaghan, entered a protest against the exclusion of Wigan pies in favor of rivals from nearby but “foreign” Adlington.
“We were stunned,” said one of Wigan’s local pie-munching favorites, Andy Driscoll. “My mate and I have been practicing for weeks on small, soft Wigan pies, and at the last minute, they’ve substituted these monsters.”
Crusted with brittle pastry and 12cm in diameter, the pies tasted wonderful but played havoc with records at the championships, one of Britain’s main contributions to international competitive eating. The Wigan event — in which competitors must eat a pie in the fastest possible time — has been won in an impressive 35.86 seconds.
But there was no hope of that with the Adlington pies, which confused veterans among the 10 finalists and allowed a novice, Barry Rigby, to take the title. An outsider, the 36-year-old warehouseman finished his pie in 45 seconds and celebrated with three more, using the silver winner’s cup as his dish.
“It’s a matter of practice, whatever the size of the pie,” he said. “But there’s a lot of thinking involved too. You’ve got to work out how to breathe, for instance. I’m not giving too much away, but the basic rule is bite, swallow, bite, swallow and breathe through your nose.”
Julie Walsh, who had hoped to become the first woman to seize the trophy, walked out when she realized the pies were not from Wigan.
“I’m sick with disappointment but there are some principles you can’t compromise,” she said.
The ban on “outside gravy,” slopped on from a float, followed allegations last year that cough linctus was added by some competitors to ease the food swiftly down. Previous controversies have led to a complicated set of rules, rather resembling cricket’s, which were drawn up after officials resolved their differences at an all-day meeting.
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