Meet the five-time beer-mile world champion: ‘I knew I could chug from a young age'
Yet over the past five years, this unassuming 30-year-old Canadian has put together an extraordinary level of dominance that may be unprecedented in world sport, his achievements surpassing anything that his better known peers have achieved.
Bellemore's sport of choice is the beer mile, which involves downing four beers while running a mile really fast. He has won the Beer Mile World Classic, an international event which brings together the best of the best at drinking beer while also running a mile, for the past five years in a row, a staggering success in a hotly contested event.
The rules of the beer mile are simple. Athletes must drink a beer, then run a lap of a 400m track. The competitors then drink another beer, and so on, until a mile is completed. The beer must be at least 355ml (12oz) in volume and no less than 5% ABV, with contestants choosing their own beer and whether to use cans or bottles. Vomiting is punished by running an extra lap.
It's a sport that is 'equal parts gastric challenge and athletic endeavor', Beermile.com says, and Bellemore is the best of the best.
I think a lot of people think maybe I'm booze bag, maybe a bad influence because I'm doing these races
Corey Bellemore
'From a young age – and this is not beer related – if I had to consume a bunch of liquid after running practice, I could finish the entire water bottle in a very short time. Electrolyte mix, Gatorade, whatever it was, I could down it as quick as I needed to get it in,' Bellemore said.
'So I knew I could chug from a young age.'
And chug he has, at Beer Mile events around the world, sending records toppling as he goes.
At the Beer Mile World Classic in Portugal, in late July, Bellemore broke his own world record for the beer mile, setting a time of four minutes 27.1 seconds. For reference, the fastest ever mile time is 3:43.13, set by Hicham El Guerrouj of Morocco in 1999. El Guerrouj did not drink four beers during his run.
Despite his success, Bellemore was not always destined to be the titan of the beer mile. He was a competitive runner at university, specializing in the 800m and 1500m, and has represented Canada in international athletics events, but only discovered the beer mile when he was 21 years old. It's a remarkable feat in an era when many sportspeople begin training for their sports as children.
'I didn't go searching for it. It kind of found me,' Bellemore said.
He tried the beer mile in 2016 just for a bit of fun, with his twin brother monitoring his times and beer consumption and a friend filming the endeavor. In Bellemore's first attempt he beat the world record – albeit unofficially – and after the footage was uploaded to YouTube, Bellemore's journey began.
'I woke up the next morning to a message from an account called Beer Mile World Classic,' Bellemore said. 'They just happened to be hosting a competition in London, England, that weekend. They said: 'We'll pay for your flight. We'll pay for your trip. Do you think you can get on a flight tonight and come here for this weekend?''
He could. Jet-lagged and with only one beer mile experience behind him, Bellemore won the Beer Mile World Classic, beating England's Dale King Clutterbuck by 15 seconds.
Bellemore did not compete in the 2017 race, but he returned in 2018, when he lost to Clutterbuck in heartbreaking fashion, as Bellemore was judged not to have drunk all of his beer. He won again in 2019 before missing the race in 2020, but has won every year since then – five in a row. Undisputedly the world's best at running a mile while drinking beer, Bellemore holds the overall world record as well as the record for using canned beer and also has the best time in the non-alcoholic beer mile.
The world classic in 2023 provided exceptional sporting drama, when Bellemore's shoe came off in the first few yards of the race. With fans on the edge of their seats, Bellemore stormed into the lead anyway, wearing just one shoe as he rocketed around the track to claim another title.
Despite his unparalleled success, Bellemore has eschewed the limelight. He doesn't want to be known as just a beer drinker: he focuses his training almost exclusively on the running aspect of the beer mile and remains a talented athlete – later this year he will begin competing professionally in the triathlon.
Related: Let the bog snorkelling commence! 10 of the weirdest sporting events in the UK
'It took me a long time to kind of acknowledge and I sort of just own that I do these things,' he said.
'I think a lot of people get a misrepresentation of who I am, of what I'm about, what I do. I think a lot of people think maybe I'm a booze bag, maybe a bad influence because I'm doing these races.
'Obviously, it's probably not the best for your body if you're doing these continuously. But I only do these once or twice a year, and with the opportunities it brings, it's a no-brainer for me. I've met some phenomenal people and been to some amazing places. That's why I do it.'
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
12 minutes ago
- Yahoo
'There's a core ethical dilemma': How ringside doctors in boxing and MMA approach a difficult job in brutal sports
Margaret Goodman was a young neurologist just beginning to try out the role of ringside physician in her home state of Nevada when she got some advice from Donald 'Doc' Romeo, a man who by then estimated he'd worked somewhere in the neighborhood of 10,000 fights, from Muhammad Ali's destruction of Floyd Patterson to the 'eight minutes of fury' between Marvin Hagler and Thomas Hearns. 'First thing he told me was, 'don't go in the ring,'' Goodman said. 'I was like, what? I'm the ringside physician. If a fighter's hurt, that's what I'm here for. I've got to go in the ring. [Romeo] shook his head and said, 'no matter what happens, don't go in the ring.'' It took Goodman a while to understand what he was telling her. She didn't get it at first. But after she went from working amateur Golden Gloves events to major pro fights in Las Vegas, the epicenter of boxing in America, it started to become clear. Once a doctor steps in the ring, she's essentially on stage, in the spotlight, subject to all kinds of scrutiny. This is also why Goodman's partner, a fellow ringside physician named Edwin 'Flip' Homansky (the man called in to examine the bite marks on Evander Holyfield's ear that night against Mike Tyson in 1997), asked her if she was sure she'd be able to handle the pressure of this kind of work. 'I thought, pressure? I'm a neurologist. I deal with all kinds of really serious issues. But he was right,' Goodman said. 'Especially somewhere like Las Vegas, where everything is on TV, it is a lot of pressure. It's not just the crowds, either. It's a lot of other people expressing opinions on your work. Commentators, fighters, promoters, other ring doctors. Pressure from the [state athletic] commission. Pressure from the cornermen. You tell yourself none of that is important — and it isn't, because you're still going to do your job and do the right thing — but you realize there's a lot riding on your decisions.' For starters, there's the obvious. What if you recommended that the fight be allowed to continue, only for one fighter to suffer serious or even life-threatening injuries? What if you put a fighter in the ring who was medically unfit to be there in the first place? What if you failed to recognize the seriousness of a cut, and it ended up costing a fighter his eye? But what Goodman found, as she got deeper into the work and got to know more fighters and trainers on a personal level, was that she also had people's careers in her hands at times. And since she was one of the very few female doctors in this space, not to mention one with bright red hair, which made her instantly recognizable on TV broadcasts, people tended to remember every call she made — and they weren't hesitant about bringing them up to her later. 'If a fighter loses or gets stopped in a fight, it can really change what happens to them and where their careers go from there,' Goodman said. 'That's especially true in boxing, though also in MMA to some extent. There are implications, so you have to be aware of that. Bottom line, if someone's in danger, you get them out of there. But you do have to be aware of what that's going to mean for them.' Most fight fans never think about the doctors at ring or cageside unless something bad happens. Maybe the attending physician suggests a fight be stopped due to a cut that really isn't so bad. (Doctors have the power to stop fights on their own in some states, but in others can only recommend that the referee do so, which is a suggestion referees almost always follow.) Even worse, maybe the doctor fails to intervene on time, leaving a fighter to suffer serious injury or death long after the fight should have been stopped. It can be a tricky tightrope to walk for people who have dedicated so much of their lives to healing and helping people. In fight sports, they find themselves a party to something that has as its stated goal the inflicting of damage on one human being at the hands of another. 'This is the core ethical dilemma of every ringside doctor,' said Kirlos Haroun, an emergency room physician at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, who also works as a ringside physician for the Maryland State Athletic Commission. 'Some doctors think about it a lot, and others don't. I've been challenged by some of my mentors who say, are you not consenting to long-term brain damage by being ringside? And I don't have a perfect answer to this. I think, without it being an excuse, this is something that society has accepted. We are allowing people to do this to make money. At a minimum, ringside doctors can be a pathway towards making it as healthy as possible.' As a longtime MMA fan, Haroun admitted that it's far less fun to watch fights as a ringside physician than as a regular observer. 'As a fan, I'm rooting for a knockout,' Haroun said. 'When I'm a ringside doctor, I'm praying for a decision because I do not want to walk in there.' But on those occasions when he is called upon to make a decision about which fights can continue, Haroun said, it requires a doctor to tap into a different kind of thinking. Because, quite frankly, none of this is good for the human body or brain. That's a given. But what a doctor is being asked to decide is whether it's suddenly become unreasonably dangerous as opposed to acceptably risky. That can be a strange head space for a physician to occupy. 'It's mitigation,' Haroun said. 'It's not removing risk, because you can't. The core idea here is to cause traumatic brain injury and knock the other person out. Personally, I think I'm usually able to disconnect it. But every once in a while I'm sitting next to a friend watching fights and they ask me, 'are you OK with this?' I do have these moments of ethical dilemma, and it's hard. It's hard.' Manjit Gosal is not only the medical director for the British Columbia Athletic Commission, he's also a family practice doctor and lifelong martial arts practitioner. This, he said, gives him a certain perspective on the work, since he knows what it feels like to push through pain in competition or insist he's fine when he knows he's not. He also knows what it feels like to suffer a concussion from a well-placed strike. 'I think it was one of my patients who first told me there were MMA events going down on one of the reserves here, back before it was legal,' Gosal said. 'So I thought, well I have to go help out and keep an eye on these guys. … I remember I got a call from the B.C. Athletic Commission — this is, again, way back before MMA was legal here — and they wanted to slap me on the wrist for it. I said, well, I'm a physician. I can help out any person who's in need, anywhere necessary. Then about a year and a half later, as MMA was getting legalized here, they called me back and said, 'we've heard you do these kinds of events. Would you like to work for us?'' Gosal said he's been present for every UFC event in Vancouver since the promotion first starting bringing shows to British Columbia in 2010. He's also worked multiple regional events over the years, watching the sport grow and change in the process. In that time he's had to stop fights over the protests of fighters and their corners. 'Initially, maybe they think they're fine to continue, they can push through this,' Gosal said. 'But I've never had a fighter afterwards say to me, 'how dare you stop that fight.' They've always acted respectfully and said, 'thanks for looking out for me, doc.' I tell them what I'm there to do is protect them, so they can still walk down the stairs and bring a fork to their mouth in their later years. And they understand that.' Many people think cuts come with the toughest judgment calls for a doctor, Gosal said, but it's generally not the case. Most facial lacerations produce more blood than genuine cause for concern. And those that are worth stopping a fight over tend to announce themselves with a certain obvious clarity. 'You're asking yourself, is it in a high-risk area? Is it blocking the vision?' Gosal said. 'If it is, that's pretty simple. It doesn't matter how big the fight is, if I can see bone and it's in an area where the next blow could damage the nerve, over the eye for example and affect this person's vision for the rest of his life, then the fight's got to stop.' The really tricky ones, in Gosal's experience, are the eye pokes that continue to plague MMA, with its open-fingered gloves. Those often come with controversy, as fans argue over what's inadvertent and what might be purposeful, as well as which fighters might be making it out to be more severe than it is in hopes of a point deduction or even a disqualification victory. A lot is left to interpretation in these instances. Sometimes a fighter's vision can clear quickly after an eye poke. Other times it might be impaired for hours or even days. The ringside doctor has a limited time in which to conduct an examination in the cage and make a decision. 'If it's accidental or whether it's deliberate, that doesn't really matter,' Gosal said. 'But there's two aspects to it. Can the athlete see or not? You can assess that, but it's a very short exam that you do when you're in there assessing somebody. You want to be very direct, very quick and get an answer. … But it's going to happen from time to time where those can be used for a way of getting out of a fight, which is fine too. If a fighter wants out, you want to stop it. But I'm sure the fighters sometimes make some calculations on that. Is it the first round? Is it the last round? Am I ahead? That's part of the game as well.' One thing Goodman learned from all her years working boxing and MMA events is that deception is always part of the fight game, and in many different ways. Fighters are constantly trying to trick each other, but also referees and doctors and maybe even their own coaches. That includes not just what happens in the ring or cage, but what's happened in the weeks or months before. 'One of the hardest parts is that you don't know where everyone's coming from,' Goodman said. 'You don't know what's happened in training, if they got hurt in the gym. To really do this job well, I think you need to do as much preparatory work as you can to know who you're dealing with, what might have happened to them in other fights in other jurisdictions.' This, Goodman said, is one reason why it's important for athletic commissions to share information with one another. Without a shared database of fights and fighters, it's left to individual doctors to know who might be coming off a knockout loss too soon, or who's had eye trouble in the past that could become an issue again in future fights, for example. 'But no matter what you think you know,' Goodman said, 'one thing about this sport is you can always have something happen that's never happened before. Then you have to make a decision.'
Yahoo
42 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Frederick Richard is taking his fight to make gymnastics 'cool' to a new front: His uniform
NEW ORLEANS (AP) — Frederick Richard is taking the fight to make men's gymnastics matter to a new front: his wardrobe. The charismatic 21-year-old Olympic bronze medalist switched out the stirrup pants that have long been a staple of the men's uniform for shorts with compression leggings at the U.S. Championships this weekend, firm in his belief that the three-tenths (0.3) deduction he receives every day of competition that he breaks the rules is worth it if it makes his sport more accessible. Even when those tenths add up. Richard edged Fuzzy Benas by less than a quarter of a point for second place behind two-time national champion Asher Hong. If Richard had worn the traditional uniform, his margin over Benas could have been a little more comfortable. Yet asked if the statement he is trying to make — that it's time for men's gymnastics to modernize its uniforms — is worth the risk to his potential placement during a given meet, he didn't hesitate. 'It's 1,000% worth it,' Richard said. 'If you look at these kids in the crowd, I'm thinking about them and I'm thinking about when I was younger.' Finding an alternative While Richard quickly fell in love with gymnastics as a kid growing up in the Boston area, the stirrup pants worn by the guys on pommel horse, still rings, parallel bars, and high bar were another matter. 'If I left the gym to go to the gas station, I didn't want anybody to see me in my pommel horse pants,' Richard said. 'Kids would say, 'Do you do gymnastics?' I'd say 'Yeah.' But I didn't want them to search 'gymnast' and see the uniform. I didn't feel like it was cool.' His solution was to design an alternative. With the help of the apparel company Turn, Richard debuted the look earlier this year and 'refined' it ahead of nationals. During the opening night of competition on Thursday, the rising Michigan junior wore maize-and-blue colored zebra-patterned leggings with (almost) matching blue shorts. On Saturday, Richard swapped the maize and blue for gray. Both times, there was a 'ND -0.3' next to Richard's score on the first event in which the traditional pants were required. Yet Richard wasn't as focused on the ribbon board where his score was posted, but on the young boys in the stands below them. '(I want them to) see this, and they're like, 'This is cool. I want to wear this. This kid is trying to make the sport cool, he looks cool,'' Richard said. 'And that's the stuff that gets kids into the sport, that's stuff that keeps kids in the sport.' Even if it's a largely American conversation. Fighting for relevance While the popularity of men's gymnastics in the U.S. has declined for decades (though there is optimism that the bronze medal Richard and his teammates captured at the 2024 Olympics could help stem the tide), there are no such issues overseas. They're not talking about stirrup pants in China. Or Japan. Or Russia. Places with dominant programs whose stars become champions and national heroes in the process. The challenges men's gymnastics faces in the U.S. are many. The number of Division I programs that offer it as a scholarship sport is a fraction of what it was decades ago. And the impact of the recent House settlement could make opportunities at a level that has long served as a feeder system to the U.S. national team even scarcer. At the Olympic level, the men have long competed in the shadow of the star-studded (and highly successful) women's program. Richard has long understood this. He's seen the attrition firsthand. While the uniform didn't stop him from pressing on, he believes he might be the exception, not the rule. Countless young boys dabble in multiple sports growing up, gymnastics included. Richard thinks tweaking the uniform requirements into something he considers more modern could remove what he thinks might be a roadblock to sticking with it for some. 'It does add to what makes a 12-year-old boy decide, 'Do I want to keep doing this sport? Or should I play football or soccer, because my friends think I'm cool when I play with them?' he said. The rules do allow for a little latitude. Some German female gymnasts opted for full-body unitards at each of the last two Olympics, though the design does not run afoul of FIG regulations. What Richard is doing does. Pushing the limits And while he stressed he would never wear his outlawed uniform in a team competition — he wore regulation pants while helping lead Michigan to the NCAA championship this spring — that might not be the case the next time he competes internationally. 'We'll see about the world stage,' Richard said. 'We'll have to talk and see what they allow, but I want to keep pushing it. I'm having fun. I feel more free.' He'll have some time to think about it. When the six-man roster for the 2025 World Championships was announced late Saturday night, Richard's name wasn't on it. The decision had nothing to do with Richard's uniform but the uniqueness of this year's world meet, which does not include a team event and is largely designed for event specialists. At his best, Richard is one of the top all-arounders on the planet. Yet even he admitted he was at about '80%' at nationals following a whirlwind stretch that included traveling to places like Uganda. Richard is partnering with the African nation to open a facility for boys there interested in acrobatics. The joy he felt during the trip was palpable. So has the criticism he's received back home for his uniform choice, with some telling him if he wants to look like a basketball player, maybe he should go play basketball. While Richard's modified look wouldn't look out of place on the court, pommel horse specialist Stephen Nedoroscik — who won a pair of bronze medals in Paris and became a breakout star in the process (all while wearing stirrup pants) last summer — agrees with his Olympic teammate that there 'should be a certain level of flexibility' when it comes to uniforms, though he also pointed out that having everyone wear identical outfits is designed to help the judges do their jobs. 'So like, you can't wear like super baggy clothes, obviously,' Nedoroscik said. 'But I do like there should be maybe a little bit of wiggle room.' That's all Richard says he is asking for, though it seems highly unlikely the FIG would eliminate the deduction for a uniform violation anytime soon. That is not going to stop Richard from pressing on. 'I'll wear it for the next 10 years if I have to,' he said. 'So eventually, if I keep succeeding and winning, and eventually on the international stage do the same thing and keep winning, (the FIG) will see how people like it (and) the younger kids will start wearing it ... and the trend is going to grow.' ___ AP sports:
Yahoo
42 minutes ago
- Yahoo
From coach to chef de mission, Jamie Randell says she's ready to go for her 10th Canada Games
Jamie Randell has been everything from an athlete to coach to now chef de mission for the 2025 Canada Summer Games. She caught up with the CBC's Jeremy Eaton ahead of the start of competition to spell out what's ahead.
