I’m the toe wrestling world champion – my family couldn’t be prouder of me

Standing on the dancefloor of a Derby nightclub back in 2010, I was growing increasingly frustrated.

A group of rowdy lads kept bumping into me without apologising, so, after being knocked for the third time, my friend snapped.

‘Be careful! She’s the world toe wrestling champion!’

After a beat, they immediately threw their heads back and laughed. 

I understand this reaction of course – nobody expects you to say something so random, but that’s what I love about my sport, it’s just good fun and we could all do with a bit of that.   

Being arrogant lads though, a few then said they’d easily beat me.
Realising I wasn’t joking they quickly Googled me to see if I was lying. When they discovered I was not, their faces dropped.

In order to save face, one lad took off his shoes and socks, and we were toes away right there and then.

Of course, I beat him easily, which quickly wiped the smirk off his face.

He’d underestimated how tough it was to toe wrestle, and he’d underestimated me.

Someone who didn’t was my boss. In fact, he’s the reason I got into toe wrestling in 2008 in the first place.

I remember thinking: ‘I’m not sure how riding horses for a living computes to being good at toe wrestling’. However, I was several pints deep at this point and thought ‘why not?’ – at the very least it’d be a funny story one day.

Toe wrestling is like arm wrestling, but with your feet. The battle takes place on a specially built ‘toedium’, that has two walls on either side. You lock your toes in there, and it’s the best of three starting with your right foot. You need to touch the wall with your foot or toe 

To lose on such a silly mistake was frustrating, especially as I’m such a competitive person by nature. But it did teach me a valuable lesson: save the drinking for afterwards. 

I also knew that, if I started to take this seriously, I could easily beat her next year.

So, I carried over my nickname from playing football – ‘twinkletoes’ – and began competing seri2023

ously.