After crews used blowtorches to clear the ice-covered raceway, a 28-year-old mother of two won the annual Shrove Tuesday trans-Atlantic pancake race on Tuesday, beating the winner of the British leg of the race by nine seconds.
Nicole Schowengerdt covered the 380-meter course in 63 seconds to beat Britain’s Nicky Stallis, who had won the leg of the race in Olney, England, six hours earlier.
Light to moderate snow was falling in Liberal as racers clad in aprons and head scarves ran the course with a pancake in their pan, flipping it at the beginning and end of the race.
“I definitely did not train in weather conditions like this,” Schowengerdt told the Leader & Times newspaper in Liberal. “I was just surprised when I saw that they had to blow torch ice off the road.”
Shrove Tuesday, widely known in Britain as Pancake Day, was traditionally the last day for merrymaking before the start of Lent. Pancakes were thought to be a good way for the Christian faithful to consume the fat they were supposed to forgo during the 40-day period of self-denial before Easter.
According to legend, the Olney race started in 1445 when a harried housewife arrived at church on Shrove Tuesday still clutching her frying pan with a pancake in it. Liberal challenged Olney in 1950 after seeing photos of the race in a magazine. — Sapa-AP