38 competitors vie for cash, trophy in grave-digging contest

A grave-digging contest in a cemetery in Hungary may sound like the opening line of a comedy skit as 38 competitors grabbed picks and shovels to win the coveted trophy, the Associated Press reported.

The Hungarian Association of Cemetery Maintainers and Operators organised the contest to showcase the grave-digging trade and its skills, and shake off death-related taboos.

The dry summer-baked soil in the public cemetery in Nyergesújfalu, northern Hungary, proved a worthy adversary for the 19 two-man teams.

They huffed and puffed and sweated as they raced for the title of quickest-dug and most stylish grave during the ‘energy-sapping’ contest.

“Speed is the main thing here, not the beauty,” said Róbert Nagy, the victor with his teammate, László Kiss.

“When you have to dig a grave for a funeral, you have to be very careful about the exact dimensions and to make sure that it is beautifully carved,” he said.

Their winning time during the contest was 1 hour, 21 minutes, digging to contest specifications of graves 1.6 metres deep, two metres long and 0.8 metres wide.

The winning pair shared a cash prize of 200,000 Hungarian forints (about $640) and a trophy in a contest said to be held every two years.

In another bizarre development, A British man pleaded guilty to a charge of negligence in the fatal fall of his three-year-old son from a hotel window during a family vacation at a resort in Cyprus.

He sat quietly in the courtroom’s rear seats with his mother and father, while his lawyer entered the plea on his behalf.

The 37-year-old defendant, who The Associated Press isn’t naming in accordance with local law, will again appear in court on October 5 for mitigation and sentencing, Paphos District Court judge Froso Christodoulides said.

The defendant and his family were reportedly a few days into their vacation at Cyprus’ southwestern resort town of Paphos when the boy fell from the hotel’s fourth-floor window.

The circumstances of the fall remain unclear.

Alexandrou said his client decided to plead guilty to the single charge of causing death due to negligent and careless actions, primarily to avoid a lengthy trial and spare his family from reliving the circumstances of the boy’s death with detailed evidence presented in court.

Cypriot law prohibits a defendant from being named in court proceedings.