Hard core! Apple peeling champion slices through competition to produce nearly four-metre strip of skin

Hard core! Apple peeling champion slices through competition to produce nearly four-metre strip of skin Though she lives with constant pain, Stanthorpe’s Kerrie Stratford still has what it takes to claim her 22nd harvest festival title Get our weekend culture and lifestyle email Outside a marquee, across from the clock tower, a crowd is gathering for the Stanthorpe apple and grape harvest festival’s apple peeling contest. Well, contest might be an exaggeration. Kerrie Stratford, 65, is the undisputed champion of apple peeling. There is no competition. She has won 21 titles at the Queensland town’s biannual festival, claiming a shelf full of trophies including one tasteful prize that is a rock with a peeler on top of it. It doesn’t stop a table of 10 competitors from trying though. Yet no one will admit to secretly practising at home. Nonchalance is apparently the only acceptable attitude towards competitive apple peeling. Especially Stratford. “No, no, no,” she says. “I’m just relaxed,” she adds, without really looking it. This morning she will attempt to break her own record. The pressure is on. The peelers are on the table. The apples are ready. Fingers are being flexed. The first contest is the fastest to peel an apple. Stratford has held this record, too. “I held the fastest and longest, both titles, for quite a while,” she says. “But as I’ve gotten older my speed isn’t there any more. Arthritis is coming in.” Russell Wantling, the festival’s president, decides he has to stand up to employ the full force of the peeler. A cookery writer, Kim McCosker, wins; she is there to judge the “prestigious” apple pie competition later in the morning. There is a tremor and a shake as Stratford clutches the peeler for the second contest, the longest peel. And they’re off. A flurry of action. They have 10 minutes; the countdown begins. This is clearly an art. Stratford is not just peeling thin lines of skin, she is taking part of the flesh so the peel won’t break. Sign up for ...