Yes, we have featured one of these photographs quite frequently, but who can resist?

With the Commonwealth Games and European championship behind us, and with the success of the Lionesses, who finally brought football home, it is time to pay tribute to our own champions in Copeland.

Champions come in all sizes and fields of endeavour, but we could suggest that the only place in the country, or even the world, where people are judged y their ugliest faces is right on our doorstep - at the Egremont Crab Fair.

The Queen looks slightly bemused at Champion gurner Tommy Mattinson during a tour of the Beacon. We wonder what she was thinking because it is really not a pretty sight.

Is it just urban myth that some, including Tommy, have had their teeth removed to help their gurning faces? Now that would be a step too far, even if there was a world championship to win.

Tommy is proof, however, that champions come in all shapes and sizes = from the fairly grotesque to the very cute - and that would describe young Whitehaven's girl,Stephanie Coulter who won a world country dance championships in the USA im 2005. Is she still dancing more than a decade later?

This page also shows a group of very smart looking young men, who look as though they have never been near a dirty rugby pitch in heir lives. They are, however, the rugby league under 14 champions. Only problem is that our achieves give us no more detail of when and what they were champions of.

Then of course, there are the yoyo championships.Whitehaven School’s champion yoyo champion was Raymond Cardy, 12. He is too young,t though, to remember the huge yoyo craze of the 1960s when there were even professional players who would teach tricks such as walk the dog and over the falls.

Even coffee makers can be champions as Katy Morgan who won the Costa Coffee barista championships in 2010. The New Zealander, living in Whitehaven, won with the Kiwi invention, the flat white.

We have one of the youngest bowls players, a young pool player, a community champion and children learning Judo.

It is quite a mixed bag but also shows that the Copeland area has plenty of people to be proud of.

Let us know if you have pursued your interests and what you are doing now.

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