NC State alum Abby Lampe talks about the excitement and opportunities presented to her after winning the Coopers Hill Cheese Rolling Competition in Gloucester, United Kingdom.
Lampe, a recent NC State graduate and North Carolina native, is a fan of sports and unique races, including the Krispy Kreme Challenge, which inspired her to take part in the cheese-rolling competition.
“I’ve been talking about this for a long time,” Lampe said. “Oh, my gosh, a really long time. And even at my graduation dinner with all my family, one of the key talking points was the strategy for the cheese roll.”
Lampe said going viral has been a crazy experience.
“It’s just been a really surreal kind of experience because I never would have thought that it would have blown up to this magnitude and people reaching out to me on different platforms,” Lampe said. “It’s just been really crazy to see.”
Lampe has had many opportunities presented to her since winning the race including being on the news, working with Iconic Heroes and Wolfpack Outfitters to sell t-shirts, having her picture hung in Amedeo’s Italian Restaurant, being invited as a VIP guest at Packapalooza and being invited to be recognized at an NC State football game. All of the proceeds from the Iconic Heroes t-shirt deal (about $336) will be donated to the Jimmy V. Cancer Fund Foundation. 75% of the Wolfpack Outfitters proceeds will also go to the Foundation, and the last 25% of proceeds will go toward shipping the roll of cheese, which costs $86.
Lampe said the first few days after she won were overwhelming.
“Because I was in another country and everyone was reaching out to me and I didn’t have my iPad or my laptop to really manage things, I only had my phone,” Lampe said. “So my sister had to be my mom-manager, and I had to send her things.”
Lampe said she was able to enjoy all the messages and publicity once things began to settle down.
“It’s just been really fun to just look back and see what people are saying,” Lampe said. “And it’s just really funny, because it’s such an obscure event … Roy Cooper acknowledged [the win] and the North Carolina Senate Floor did too, so hearing about that and hearing and seeing all of the things that are being said, it’s just so surreal and so funny.”
Lampe said she enjoyed that the event reminded her of students coming together to plan events.
“Oh, it’s a really big community thing,” Lampe said. “And I think that’s really funny. Like, that’s something we do in school and stuff. We all band together to put on an event and no one’s gonna get in trouble for it because they can’t stop it.”
Lampe said the skills she learned from her engineering degree and in playing sports helped her win the cheese rolling competition.
“With my industrial engineering degree, that’s all about maximizing making things more efficient, like going down the fastest way and maximizing effort,” Lampe said. “So utilizing that mindset going in, and then I’ve played sports all throughout my life … So, being competitive really played a role in it.”
Lampe said watching film for sports in high school helped her come up with a strategy to win the race.
“In high school, I played basketball, and we had to watch film over and over again,” Lampe said. “I think that really helped, because I watched cheese-rolling film, over and over again, leading up to the race. A few days prior to the race, I watched the film before I went to bed. I would watch like, an hour and a half for two days, and I watched hours of film.”
Lampe said she wants the NC State community to share this victory with her.
“Celebrate the big victory, celebrate the little victories,” Lampe said. “It’s always a good day to be a Wolfpack fan and knowing that no other school in the U.S. can say that they have someone who is the Cheese Rolling world champion.”
Lampe said she hopes to hold an event to share the roll of cheese with the NC State community once it makes it to the U.S.
“That’s how I would probably want it to happen,” Lampe said. “Because I love spending time with people and I think it’s such a unique event, and to be able to share that with the NC State community would be really cool.”
