A visit to the World’s Largest Trophy Cup is always an awarding experience. The gleaming golden goblet rests atop Athletic Awards in downtown Seattle, and serves as a source of hope for this proud sporting city.
The shop has been around in one form or another since 1949, but it wasn’t until they lifted the prodigious prize in 1983 that business started booming. Since then, their cuppeth hath runneth over with succeth!
“My dad and I built that trophy,” enthused Monty Holmes, the amicable President of Athletic Awards, in a recent interview. “We wanted it to be a landmark. We had this crane that lifted it up. Channel 5, Channel 4, they were all here. We were all set and then Channel 7 comes up and says, ‘Oh we’re late, we missed it!’. And my dad said, ‘Oh we’ll take it back down and put it back up again!’”
I asked them to do the same thing when I turned up 39 years later, but they weren’t so accommodating. It pays to be part of the mainstream media, I suppose.
Winner, winner, chicken dinner!
Having struggled with polio in my youth, and later seeing a promising competitive hip hop career derailed by doping accusations, I’ve never actually won a trophy of my own. I even missed out on a participation trophy in Year 5 because the teacher said I was too eager when taking the stage to receive it.
Understandably, my encounter with the World’s largest Trophy Cup proved to be a rollercoaster of emotions – especially as I was already overcome with passion after visiting the nearby Dreamer and Sonic Bloom.
Blasting an a capella version of We Are The Champions by influential pop group Queen from a portable speaker, I pranced around as if I’d won both the Super Series and World Bowl before collapsing to the street in tears, as the dereliction of my life washed over me.
Why couldn’t I have been born with Ian Thorpe’s robust physique and popularity with the women? Why?!!
Eventually a rugged Seattleite leant out his apartment window and, in the no-nonsense style the city is renowned for, gave me the option of either shutting up or having the World’s Largest Trophy Cup permanently relocated somewhere very unpleasant indeed.
One question remains, however. When the World’s Largest Trophy Cup was officially declared the World’s Largest Trophy Cup, were its owners presented with that very same World’s Largest Trophy Cup to mark the occasion?
