THE WALL STREET JOURNAL. Tuesday, September 3, 2019 |A
ago, Mr. O’Brien used onions
instead when the turnip har-
vest was bad. But midway
through the various rounds,
the outer skins began to peel
off. “Fellows were coming
back after winning with tears
in their eyes,” he says.
Martin O’Sullivan, 63, who
was born in Ballydehob and
won the race several years
ago, has one tip: “You pick the
roundest turnip you can.”
In the children’s races, each
of the roughly 10 contestants
in the under 6 category blew
past the finishing line and
kept running up the street.
One boy lost sight of his tur-
nip, wandered backward and
picked up someone else’s. A
girl in the under 8 round for-
got to toss her turnip, clutch-
ing it closely while she ran.
Racers can get competitive.
“Turnips ‘accidentally’ get
kicked,” says Dick Miles, 68,
who has run the race several
times in years past but was
doing crowd control this year.
“Martin O’Sullivan kicked my
turnip on one occasion and
knocked me out of the way.”
Mr. O’Sullivan says he has
no recollection of kicking Mr.
Miles’ turnip. “I deny knowl-
edge,” he says.
Ballydehob attracted hip-
pies and artists from around
Europe in the 1970s. Now, it is
home to the Michelin-starred
Restaurant Chestnut and this
year’s Google Science Fair
Grand Prize winner, 18-year-
old Fionn Ferreira.
Its turnip race is part of
what appears to be a world-
wide fascination with throw-
ing food. There’s the decades-
old La Tomatina festival inBuñol, Spain, when thousands
of people gather to throw to-
matoes at each other. At the
Battle of the Oranges in Ivrea,
Italy, participants hurl citrus.
Brockworth, England has an
annual cheese-rolling festival
where contestants chase an
eight pound wheel of Double
Gloucester down a steep hill.
“You’ll never catch the cheese.
It is going 80 miles an hour,”
says Sara Stevens, the festi-
val’s organizer. The winner is
the first one down the hill.
The prize is the cheese.
Back at the Turnip Champi-
onship, 16-year-old Benedikt
Martin flies over the finish
line first, in his bare feet. Jake
Shaw, 33, is second. And Denis
O’Brien, Mr. O’Brien’s 40-year-
old son, comes in third,
slowed down by a dramatic
tumble near the end of the
race.
“I went down to grab my
turnip and I tripped,” said the
younger Mr. O’Brien.
While the World Champion-
ship title is a bit of hubris—
Mr. O’Brien says he doesn’t
know of any other turnip
races—this is an international
winner’s circle.
Mr. Martin is from Ger-
many. Mr. Shaw is from Man-
chester, England. He and his
family were on vacation in the
area and were simply driving
by when they saw the crowd.
“I thought, ‘Why not’? I used
to play football,” Mr. Shaw
says.
Mr. Martin is modest about
his win. “I think it was luck,”
he says. Alas, he is too young
to claim the grand prize: A
pewter trophy filled with Irish
whiskey.An Irish village figures out how to interest children in turnips.SEAN GALLAGHERchance that if Parliament does
not act this week we will leave
without a deal,” said Conser-
vative lawmaker David Gauke,
a former justice minister who
is against a no-deal Brexit.
Since becoming prime min-
ister in July, Mr. Johnson has
led a two-pronged approach to
try to resolve Brexit. On one
hand, he is trying to renegoti-
ate a divorce deal his prede-
cessor agreed with the EU last
year. On the other, he is pre-
paring the country to suddenly
break with the EU at the end
of October if improved divorce
terms aren’t offered.
Key to any renegotiation is
finding a guarantee to ensure
frictionless trade continues
between Northern Ireland,
which is in the U.K., and the
Republic of Ireland, which is in
the EU, after Brexit.
The current divorce deal
could see the U.K. locked into
a customs union with the
trade bloc indefinitely to en-
sure no hard border on the is-
land of Ireland, a move which
stops the U.K. signing its ownJohnson
Puts Vote in
Brexit Mix
trade deals. Mr. Johnson met
several EU leaders during Au-
gust and urged that this
“backstop” be replaced.
So far, no compromise has
been found. European Com-
mission spokeswoman Mina
Andreeva said Monday talks
with the U.K. are continuing
but the outcome “will depend
on when we will receive con-
crete proposals” from the U.K.
Over the weekend, Michel
Barnier, who is leading the ne-
gotiations on the EU side,
wrote in the Sunday Telegraph
newspaper that he was “not
optimistic about avoiding a
no-deal scenario.”
The Conservatives lead the
opposition Labour Party by
eight points, according to a
poll of polls by Britain Elects.
But with party preferences un-
usually volatile as the anti-
Brexit Liberal Democrats and
the upstart Brexit Party gather
significant support, an election
could extend the Brexit im-
passe or lead to a government
headed by Mr. Corbyn, La-
bour’s leftwing leader.British Prime Minister Boris Johnson speaking on Monday in the garden of No. 10 Downing Street, before his televised address.SIMON DAWSON/PRESS POOLBERLIN—Germany’s anti-
immigration Alternative for
Germany, or AfD, made
strong gains at regional elec-
tions, dealing a blow to ef-
forts by Chancellor Angela
Merkel’s conservative bloc to
reclaim votes lost to both the
right and the center-left
Greens.
The elections, in the East-
ern states of Brandenburg and
Saxony on Sunday, are a par-
ticular setback for Ms.
Merkel’s anointed successor,
Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer,
who—in what was seen as a
leadership test for her—has
failed both to stanch an exo-
dus of moderate voters to the
progressive Greens and to re-
claim votes lost to the AfD.
The polls also mark a mile-
stone for the AfD. After be-
coming the largest opposition
party in the federal parliament
two years ago, it has now es-
tablished itself as a dominant
force in Germany’s former
Communist East—though not
the largest, as some pollsters
had predicted.
This means the economic
divide between the former
East and West, which persists
almost 30 years after the
country’s reunification, has
evolved to a political divide.
The AfD scored 23.5% of the
vote in Brandenburg and 27.5%
in Saxony, making it the sec-
ond-largest party in both
states, according to official
figures. By contrast, opinion
polls put it at 12% to 13% na-
tionwide, around its 12.6%
score at the 2017 national
election.
Ms. Merkel’s Christian
Democratic Union won the
election in Saxony with 32.1%
of the vote. The CDU has
dominated that state for de-
cades, but it fell short of the
39.4% it won in the previous
election in 2014.BYBOJANPANCEVSKIMerkel
Suffers
Setback in
Elections
FROM PAGE ONE
vals, as a way to attract visi-
tors to towns still struggling
to recover from the country’s
recession a decade ago.
Ballydehob’s turnip race-
launched in the 1990s as part
of a festival that includes a
charades competition, a dog
show and a procession of tra-
ditional wooden sailboats. The
town added a bluegrass festi-
val in 2017 and a “Secret
Song” music festival, where
patrons buy tickets without
knowing who the acts will be,
in 2015.
The festival boom is getting
support from pubs in rural vil-
lages who say that new rules
aimed at reducing drunken-
driving accidents have led to a
drop in customers.
When people do go out—
perhaps springing for a taxi to
do so—they want it to be spe-
cial, says Joe O’Leary, man-
ager of Levis Corner House, a
more than century-old pub on
Ballydehob’s main drag.
The participants in the tur-
nip race have to run about 250
yards up a hill on the main
road of Ballydehob (population
274), hurling their vegetable
projectiles underhand along
the way. The first one to cross
the finish line with turnip in
hand wins.
Mr. O’Brien, 71 years old,
says the turnips he gets for
the race from a local farmer
are special. “They are as hard
as flint,” he says, and durable
enough to stay intact after be-
ing repeatedly bounced off as-
phalt.
Years ago, one spectator
landed in the hospital for two
days after a wayward turnip
hit her in the shin. “It burst a
blood vessel,” says Mr.
O’Brien, who owns a local pub,
The Irish Whip. Before the
town began putting up the
metal barriers to keep the
crowd back from the road,
some onlookers wore shin
guards.
One year, about a decade
Continued from Page One
Racers
Turnip
For Glory
set up legislation to avoid a no-
deal Brexit at the end of next
month.
“What MPs will be voting
for will be to hold a rapid
election,” the senior govern-
ment official said. An Oct. 14
vote would come three days
before a crucial summit with
EU leaders in Brussels.
Under British parliamentary
rules, Mr. Johnson can’t trigger
an election on his own. Two-
thirds of lawmakers must vote
in favor for one to be held,
meaning Mr. Johnson would
need the backing of some op-
position lawmakers.
With lawmakers returning
from their summer recess on
Tuesday, battle lines are being
drawn up over Brexit. The
fight pits lawmakers led by the
prime minister arguing that
the U.K. must quit the bloc on
Oct. 31—without a divorce deal
if necessary—against an op-
posing group that wants to
block a no-deal exit because of
the economic damage it is ex-
pected to cause.
Three years after the U.K.
voted to leave the EU, the
country and its main parties
remain bitterly split on how to
deliver on the referendum
vote, creating a stalemate that
has heightened business un-
certainty, damaged investment
and driven an outflow of fi-
nancial assets.
Mr. Johnson warned on
Monday that if lawmakers
manage to postpone Brexit for
a third time beyond the Oct. 31
deadline, “they will plainly
chop the legs out from under”
U.K. negotiators seeking a bet-
ter deal with the EU in Brus-
sels. The U.K. was originally
due to leave the bloc on March
29, but the exit date has been
twice postponed.
“I don’t want an election;
you don’t want an election,”
Mr. Johnson said. But in a hint
that he might call one if Par-
liament tied his hands, he
added: “I want everybody to
Continued from Page One
know that there are no cir-
cumstances in which I would
askBrusselstodelay.Weare
leaving on the 31st of October,
no ifs or buts.”
Lawmakers opposing a no-
deal exit were plotting ways on
Monday to force Mr. Johnson’s
hand through maneuvering in
the House of Commons that are
expected to start on Tuesday.
Their favored approach is to
pass a law requiring Mr. John-
son to ask the EU for an exten-
sion of the Brexit negotiations
beyond the Oct. 31 deadline,
unless he secures a new deal
with the EU before then, oppo-
sition party officials said.
Since his Conservative Party
musters a majority of just one
vote in the House of Commons,
Mr. Johnson is vulnerable to
any revolt in his own party.
“We are working with other
parties to do everything nec-
essary to pull our country
back from the brink,” opposi-
tion Labour Party leader Jer-
emy Corbyn said Monday, add-
ing that a no-deal Brexit would
cause economic disruption.Mr. Johnson is pushing
back, arguing that a majority
of Britons voted to leave the
EU in 2016 and their vote
should be respected.
Last week, he announced
Parliament would be sus-
pended for several weeks from
mid-September, reducing the
amount of time for lawmakersto pass laws that could frus-
trate or further delay Brexit.
Over the weekend, the gov-
ernment said any Conservative
lawmaker who votes to block a
no-deal exit could be barred
from standing for re-election
on the party’s ticket. As many
as 20 could be preparing to
rebel, political observers said.
“I would say there is a 95%‘We are leaving on
the 31st of October,
no ifs or buts,’ the
prime minister said.Your Choice
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