A Musket Shot Started a Contest to Eat a Raw Onion and the Winner Took Seven Ounces in Sixty Five Seconds
Competitors wore goggles and nose pegs in Gloucestershire as a town revived an eating championship that had lapsed since the pandemic.
Ryan Daubney ate a seven ounce raw onion in one minute and five seconds to win the revived onion eating championship at Newent in the Forest of Dean in Gloucestershire on 13 September 2026.
He beat a field of thirteen. Jade Basby won the women's title, eating a five ounce onion in one minute and 24 seconds from a field of six. Basby, a member of a fourteenth century historical re-enactment group, said she would defend the title.
Competitors wore goggles and nose pegs, and a musket shot signalled the start. Thousands of spectators watched in the town centre.
The contest ran as part of Newent Celebrates, a rebranding of the Newent Onion Fayre, which ran from 1996 until the pandemic. A planned revival in 2022 was cancelled for lack of volunteers, making 2026 the year the championship returned. The wider festival marked roughly eight hundred years of Newent's status as a market town and included medieval re-enactment, full armour combat and live music.
The organiser Andy Offord said Newent is known for its onions, always has been and always will be. A member of the organising committee said they were a bit nuts in Newent, and that onions are central to the town's identity.
For scale, the world record for eating a raw onion stands at 29.56 seconds, set by Yusuke Yamaguchi of Japan.