The Slowest Foot in “Sports”

Perhaps it is stretching the definition to call our subject a sport. But I have hard of many strange events falling under this  broad  umbrella and so will borrow the term for this post. What we shall discuss  has been occuring for 25 years so it has tradition on its side. Besides it takes place in a quaint English village known as Congham.  The little town  is located in the eastern part of the country and has a population of  less than 500 folks.

But inJuly  have the world championships of snail racing, an event which is theirs and theirs alone. Somehow, this strikes me as something Rick Reilly, late of Sports Illustrated and now with ESPN,  could include in his next book about unusual sporting events.

The latest champion in the world of  mollusks is Sydney who won the title on July 17 with a time of 3 minutes,41 seconds. By the way, that  is for a distance of 13 inches. Lest you scoff, Sydney triumphed over a field of 200  of his molluskan challengers. Lest Sydney feel over-confident, he did not match the world record set by Archie in 1995, who set a slime laden pace of 2 minutes. Archie, you are the king  of the gastropods. May Sydney be forever delivered from National Escargot Day, celebrated every May 24th in these United States. Hope Sydney never hears about that!

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• Sidney the snail races to victory in world championships (telegraph.co.uk)