It was billed as the great cheese-off: a helter-skelter, bone-jarring downhill race between the all-time champ and a young upstart.

After the hype and hyperbole, youth won out as the 24-year-old German YouTuber Tom Kopke beat the 38-year-old local hero Chris Anderson at the annual cheese-rolling event in the English West Country.

In his post-race interviews at the foot of Cooper’s Hill in Gloucestershire, Kopke said: “If that hill is hell, I’m the devil.” Anderson, tempted out of retirement by the challenge from Kopke, had taken the lead at first, but Kopke said: “I thought: ‘I’m going to get his ass.’”

He duly did, winning his third roll in three years, his prize the round of double gloucester that he and his fellow competitors had chased down the horribly steep hill. Asked to describe his method of preparation, he replied: “Shut off your brain and go for it.”

The pair embraced at the bottom. Anderson, who came second, admitted he had felt a little scared at the top and knew the game was up when he glimpsed Kopke haring past him.

The origins of the event are lost in the mists of time. Written records of it go back almost 200 years but Anderson, a ground worker who grew up in the village of Brockworth, home to the event, and has won 23 times, thinks it may have started 400 years before that. “Perhaps it was an old pagan ritual to bring good luck for the harvest,” he said.

Anderson’s tip for success is to refuse to sacrifice control for speed. “Obviously you need to be fast but overall it’s better to stay in control rather than going flat out.”

The event used to be a local affair but in recent years has morphed into something more global. Competitors travel from across the world and YouTubers and influencers attract millions of views by throwing themselves down the 1:2 gradient.

Kopke, who makes videos under the name Tooleko, has almost 500,000 subscribers and, as well as being a cheese-rolling veteran, has taken part in underground Thai fighting and reindeer racing.

Cheese-rolling has become so popular that the BBC broadcast this year’s event on iPlayer. The corporation had three reporters on the scene and two editing its live blog.

The race in which Kopke and Anderson took part was one of seven, staged over several hours. There were three men’s downhill races and one women’s. There were also less dangerous – but sweatier – children’s and mixed adults’ uphill races.

The second men’s downhill race was won by Niels Wennemars, 21, from the Netherlands, who was following in the family tradition of sporting excellence – as his father, Erben, and brother, Joep, are both world champion speed skaters.

“If you can stand and stay on your feet you will win,” he said. “If you live scared, you are going to die scared, and that is the worst way to live.”

The women’s downhill race was won by Alix Heugas, 27, from the Basque region of France. She said: “I had no technique, no training, just wing it. I’m going to eat the cheese with friends and family.”

The final race of the day was won by an American, 19-year-old Otto Linkogle, from Florida. “My heart was going and you just have to go,” he said. “I didn’t practise.”

The inherent risks of the event meant that the Tewkesbury borough safety advisory group officially declared it “unsafe”.

The council’s lead member for environmental services, Murray Stewart, said: “The cheese rolling is a unique tradition in our county and we have no desire to stop it.” But the safety group said a particular concern was how emergency services would be able to respond if there was a major incident with multiple casualties.

While the human participants often suffer bumps, bruises and worse, the cheeses generally fare well and are edible afterwards – even with this year’s very high temperatures. They are kept in a fridge until needed and carefully wrapped to make sure they remain intact.

Despite Anderson’s disappointment, his family still went home with a round of cheese after his son, William, won one of the children’s uphill races. The 11-year-old said he planned to keep the family tradition going by competing in the downhill when he was old enough.

The decision to review the sentences of two teenage boys convicted of raping two girls, aged 15 and 14, in separate incidents in November 2024 and January 2025, and a third boy who took part in the second rape, is correct. A knife was used to threaten the second victim, and the attacks were filmed with footage later uploaded to social media. Given the severity of the crimes, and the fact that having raped one girl, two of the boys went on to rape another two months later, the non-custodial sentences handed down last week by a judge in Southampton look like a serious mistake.

Fortunately, the law in England and Wales allows for overly lenient sentences to be revised by the court of appeal. In this case, a dramatic request came from one of the victims herself. In a BBC television interview on Sunday, she said that the youth rehabilitation orders issued by the judge felt like “a rock straight in my face”. She said the outcome had made her question the point of reporting the crimes in the first place, and going through a distressing trial. Such comments should alarm everyone concerned with prosecuting rape. Her mother made a public plea to the prime minister: “Please help.”

It seems certain that Richard Hermer, the attorney general, will refer the sentences up the chain – probably within a week. Most convicted rapists are sent to prison for several years. The judge in this case cited the youth of these offenders as reasons for not jailing them (two were 14 and the other 13 when the rapes were committed). But while he was right to stress the importance of rehabilitation, and young offender institutions do not have a good track record, it is extremely concerning that the impact on the victims of watching their attackers go free appears to have carried less weight.

It is also wrong that deterrence did not feature more prominently in his reported remarks. At a time of acute concern about violence against women and girls, and particularly about the proliferation of technologically enabled forms of abuse such as the filming of assaults and sharing of images, sentences send important messages to the public. It is disturbing to think that the normalisation of sexual violence, in which the online pornography industry has played a key role, may both have influenced these boys’ behaviour, and made it less likely that they would face the most serious consequences.

The timing is awkward for the government. Earlier this month, David Lammy launched a youth justice white paper containing sensible proposals including the creation of a network of small, regional youth jails, to replace failing institutions such as Feltham, and a consultation on whether the age of criminal responsibility should be raised above 10. It also used wording about “not criminalising children unnecessarily” that was echoed by the judge in this case. Ministers must now make clear that letting rapists walk free was not what they meant. This is evident from the white paper, which states that “for the most serious offences, custody will always be necessary”.

But the government must also do more about tackling the threats to girls and women, in the context of a growing sense that they are not up to it. This was added to by the recent resignation of the safeguarding minister, Jess Phillips. It has been added to again by a teenage rape survivor’s brave decision to speak out.