Andrew Carlile at 38 years of age, wins the 10½ Stone Championship title for the 11th time

The salient wrestling facts of last week are that Andrew Carlile at the age of thirty-eight years was light enough and skilled enough to win the 10½st Championship for the eleventh time;

Richard Fox won brilliant doubles at both Cockermouth and Gilsland without resorting too much to his killer buttocking; and Gemma Coulthard once more was winning the Ladies' events without losing a fall.

Behind the facts lies a wonderful blur of wrestling action. Every now and then my notebook has an asterisk after a terse description of the action; these indicate falls which were exceptional in their beauty and sudden execution. For example, Aaron Younger's winning fall against Rosie Hodgson in the final of the Under 12s at Gilsland says: 2, AY off r hip * ; and I remember the tension and close wrestling between the two prior to this sudden release into a perfectly executed fall.

For the 13½st final, I commend Richard Fox's "twist off chest" for the winning fall against a rampaging Andrew Carlile.

No fewer than three asterisks were attached to Andrew Carlile's falls at Gilsland with the common factor that all were for variations of swinging hipes. Against John Harrington in the 11½st semi-final he twice sent one of the best defensive wrestlers flying around on a "long, long - great sw hipe"

Yet my best memory of the wrestling over the week-end was a fall that made no difference to any result when Andrew Carlile won the middle fall of the 13½st final with a succession of three superb swinging hipes before Richard Fox would go down.

Even though I did not attend Powburn Show, I have a feeling that another such fall happened in the All Weights semi-final. Rothbury wrestler, Jack Hale ruefully recounted being felled by Michael Kirkham, an ultra-lightweight wrestler from Waberthwaite, who rode Hale's hipe and twisted to win. Kirkham had travelled from afar to seek the 10½st Championship and reached the final, but his long journey home must have been made sweeter by that single exceptional fall.

So, what about the Cockermouth wrestling? I was there, but my notepad remained closed. Instead the wrestling was a wonderful existential blur for me. I could scarcely get through the crowd packed around the ring when I arrived and was suddenly presented with the microphone. For an hour and a half, I remember crowds of skilled midgets competing in their droves; the power and drive of the men, the wrestlers from the crowd excelling themselves; the crowd responding to my oldest jokes, and cheering the wrestlers performances from beginning to end. The wrestling at Cockermouth was not just a sporting event, it was a heart-warming experience.

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