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TEXT 3. WIGAN’S SPORTING SPECTACLE

Every year, a pub in the town of Wigan in the north-west of England hosts what its owner Tony Callaghan calls an ‘exciting sporting spectacle’. It’s a competition that doesn’t require any athletic ability – indeed, competitors gain more calories than they burn – but the competitors would probably say that technique and training are important.

The event in question is the World Pie-Eating Championship.

Actually, ‘World’ is a bit misleading, as most of the competitors are from near Wigan, and the pies they eat, made of meat (beef) and potato with a pastry crust, are a traditional British food that is particularly popular in the north-west of England. The pies used in the competition are round, with a diameter of 12cm and a depth of 3.5cm.

Although competitive pie eating isn’t the healthiest of sports, in 2006 the championship did respond to anti-obesity guidelines from the British government: it changed the objective from eating as many pies as possible in three minutes (the record was seven, set in 2005 by a local man nicknamed ‘The Anaconda’) to eating just one pie as quickly as possible. The current champion is Barry Rigby, who won the 2009 event by finishing his pie in 45 seconds.

Another concession, also in 2006, was the introduction of a separate competition for vegetarian pie eaters. (There has been a big increase in the number of non-meat eaters in Britain in the last 40 years or so: currently around 10% of the population don’t eat red meat, which includes at least 3% who are strictly vegetarian.)

Unfortunately, just like professional athletics and cycling, the World Pie-Eating Championship has had problems with illegal substances. Some competitors want to eat their pies with gravy – which used to be allowed, but isn’t any more – and there are suspicions that others have unfairly lubricated their throats by taking cough medicine just before the competition.

The worst thing that happened in recent years was in 2007, when all the pies disappeared on the day before the competition. Competition organiser David Williams had just had the pies delivered to his home when unfortunately he took his eye off his pet dog, Charlie, who went into the kitchen and ate every one. Fortunately, however, a local pie-maker was able to make a full set of replacement pies. Seeing the funny side, Williams decided to enter Charlie in the competition, having already found out that he could eat a pie more quickly than any human. When the time came, however, Charlie didn’t even want to finish his pie, probably because he was still full from the previous day.

( Source : Стройков, С.А. Broaden Your Horizons /Учебное пособие по переводу общественно-публицистических текстов с английского языка на русский – Самара: Издательство «Офорт», 2011. – 192 с.)

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