PICTURE GALLERY Cotswold Olimpick Games returns after one-year absence

THE Cotswold Olimpick Games returned after a year off.

It took place last Friday, 1st June, on Dover's Hill in Chipping Campden.

The event dates back to 1612 and is considered to be the forerunner to the modern day Olympic Games, but the 2017 event had to be cancelled due to a lack of volunteers.

Tom Threadgill, chairman of new Robert Dover’s Games Society, said: “Judging by initial feedback and social media everybody loved it. We can’t wait to get cracking on the 2019 games now.”

The Games were officially opened by Olympic Gold Medallist and World Champion rower Matt Gotrel, who was born and brought up in Chipping Campden.

The Championship of the Hill was contested by four teams – Jailbreakers, 2016 winners Returning Heroes, Chill Out (Chipping Campden Baptist Church) and for the first time Chipping Campden Hockey Club.

The four events in the championship were the ski race, sack race, wheelbarrow race and the water race, with Chill Out emerging as the winners.

There was also the Shinkicking World Championship. Dave Hill won the elimination round against Kevin Rey, a German who’s part of a German reality TV group filming the event, and went up against existing champion Adam Miller, who won in 2014, 2015 and 2016, in the final, which Miller won after Hill retired due to an injury.

Mica Pieri was named Champion of the Hill after five contestants competed in the putting the shot, standing jump and spurning the barre along with throwing the hammer.

The finale of the event was the lighting of the beacon by the Scuttlebrook Queen, assisted by the Fire Eaters and then the torchlit parade down the hill led by the Coventry Corps of Drums, with The Sambassadors of Groove bringing up the end of the procession of hundreds of people.

The event this year had an expanded top arena with archery, vintage cars, a helter-skelter, swing boats, splat the rat, beat the buzzer, coconut shy, Harry Taylor’s Morris, Backswords, Coventry Corps of Drums, Rozie T’s Dance Academy and a music stage featuring General Jones, Greg Brice and others.

Hayman Joyce Estate Agents were the principal sponsor.