Lewis Kent, beer mile record setter, struts stuff on Ellen DeGeneres Show
Mississauga runner outraces show staff member
Lewis Kent can add a world title, and an appearance on The Ellen DeGeneres Show to his beer mile resume.
The 21-year-old from Mississauga, Ont., won the FloTrack Beer Mile world championships in world-record time Tuesday.
The victory came hours after he made an appearance on Tuesday's episode of "Ellen."
Kent ran four minutes 47.17 seconds in Austin, Tex., to lower his own world record and win the global beer mile title. The race, invented in the late 1970s by Canadian university track athletes, has participants chug a beer then run a lap. The process is repeated for each of the four laps of a mile.
Kent raced Ellen staff member Andy Zenor in a beer race outside the Burbank, Calif., studio. The Canadian handily won the race that finished on stage, and received a gaudy trophy topped with a beer mug from DeGeneres, plus a year's supply of his favourite beer.
"Lewis Kent is the world champion in a sport that combines drinking and running ... or as I call it, a typical Tuesday night," DeGeneres said in her introduction.
"And when do you throw up?" DeGeneres asked Kent.
"Hopefully you don't throw up. But if you do throw up, there's a penalty — you have to run another lap." Kent replied, prompting laughter from the audience.
Kent ran four minutes 51.9 seconds last month to lower the previous mark of 4:54.38 set by Winnipeg's Corey Gallagher in October. Kent then announced he'd gone pro, signing a shoe deal with Brooks.
His achievement caught the media's attention. Kent conducted interviews with everyone from Sports Illustrated and ESPN to celebrity news agency TMZ.