Roll with it: chasing the big cheese

In May, Liam Furneaux visited Brockworth, near Gloucester, to photograph the Cooper’s Hill Cheese Rolling and Wake, an annual event in which competitors descend a precipitous hill at astonishing speed. The aim? To be the first person to catch a wheel of cheese. These photographs present the chaos and mayhem of the spectacle as the cheese-chasers are pictured, frozen wildly in midair, arms and legs beyond control.

“When you arrive, there are signs warning of the risk to participants and spectators,” says Furneaux. Still, people persist. Most competitors don’t wear protective clothing – there are few helmets. “There was a team dressed as crash-test dummies, though I’m not sure they were padded.”

Some take the event extremely seriously, and try to run down the hill to win. Others do it for fun. “Nowadays you get YouTubers taking part,” says Furneaux. “Holding GoPros.”

Spectators are from all walks of life: lads, families, tourists. “I spoke to a group from Canada who had run an ultramarathon in Wales, then stopped here on the way home.” When this year’s event was about to begin, the gathered crowd chanted, “Cheese, cheese!” and a master of ceremonies, dressed top-to-toe in white except for a black hat and colourful ribbons, released a wheel of Double Gloucester down the hill – the winner’s elusive prize. “Everyone runs after it scarily quickly – they’re at the bottom in seconds,” says the photographer. “They flew through my camera’s viewfinder, limbs flailing. Then were gone.”

After the event, “You can spot who took part by the mud – or blood – covering their bodies,” he says. Some are disgruntled, injured, perhaps worse. But “most are excited to share their battle scars.”