World Pie Eating Championships 2009

by Edgar Allan McAbe

There was controversy at this year’s World Pie Eating Championships held in Wigan today.

The first trouble emerged last week when organisers announced that there would be random drug tests for competitors following reports that some people were using cough mixture to improve their performance.

“Dry Tickly Cough Linctus works well at lubricating the throat and causes a mild anaesthetic effect, which enables faster swallowing. In tests we’ve found this can take around two seconds off the time taken to eat a regulation Championship pie.” organiser Tony Callaghan told Wigan Today.

To combat the threat of drug cheats Callaghan chose to adopt a stop and search policy.

“We’ll be putting big blokes on the door to search pockets randomly for cough mixture.” He said.

Further controversy emerged when it was discovered that the competition pies were to be provided by a bakery from outside Wigan. Bowen’s Bakery of Adlington, near Chorley, has been chosen as Official Partner to the World Pie Eating Championships 2009 after the closure of Wigan Pies, formerly Heaton’s Bakery, in January.

Callaghan was confident that the new pies would see some records being smashed.

“Vince Bowen, being a southerner, uses real nancy gravy in the pies, which provides a much higher resistance to swallow stall. This makes for a much more streamlined competition, and may result in record times this year.” Callaghan said ahead of the contest.

But on the day the new pies were not popular with the competitors. Before the contest even began the only female competitor, Julie Walsh refused to compete.

“I’m sick with disappointment but there are some principles you can’t compromise. I’ll be back next year, if they see sense.” Walsh told The Guardian this afternoon.

Other competitors said they were stunned by the decision not to use Wigan pies, and were disappointed after spending weeks in training using Wigan pies only to be faced with the over-sized brittle-crusted Bowen’s pies.

“My mate and I have been practising for weeks on small, soft Wigan pies, and at the last minute, they’ve substituted these monsters” one competitor remarked.

The choice of new pie is being blamed for the defeat of several veteran pie munchers from Wigan by the winner Barry Rigby, a novice. Rigby managed to eat his pie in just 45 seconds, way off the record of 35 seconds but because of the increased pie dimensions all previous records will be almost impossible to beat.

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World Pie Eating Championships 2009

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