Friday, September 07, 2007

Free Belgian beer!

Okay, don't get too excited — it's conditional.

In case I haven't mentioned it, oh, in the last five minutes, my favorite sport is
track and field, and a week from today is the very coolest track meet of them all: the Memorial Van Damme in Brussels, Belgium. Why is this one the best? Because of this (from their website):

Free beer for each new world record
Jupiler Blue offers every single spectator of the crowd of 47,000 a free Jupiler Blue should a world record be broken at the Memorial Van Damme on 14 September 2007. As soon as a world record has been broken the audience can collect their free Jupiler Blue at the bars.

Okay, maybe that's not as great as it sounds. The readers of ratebeer.com didn't speak too highly of Jupiler Blue. But ah, what the hell — free beer is free beer. Unless it's Coors. Even I won't drink free Coors.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Lol. I agree with the Coors comment. Is Coors even considered a beer?

Karla said...

Guess what? I am flying through Brussels on that exact day! If there is a t shirt for the event at the airport I'll get you one...

Liz said...

I just discovered your blog and I love it. I lived in Chicago for nearly 20 years before moving to Austin 2 years ago. I have to say that I feel fortunate to have moved from one beer-loving-town to another.

Anonymous said...

Do you know if they actully delivered? - the women's 2 mile record was broken at that meet but I can't find any mention of the 70,000 spectators receiving their free beer. Pretty awesome result for track and field and the spectators there - we are trying to do something similar in Aus!

Cheers,

Lee said...

Actually, the Brussels crowd was 47,500 (I think the 70K you're thinking of was in Berlin two days later), but no, I haven't heard whether everyone got their beer. A case actually could have been made to deny the beer — because 2 miles is an uncommon event, the IAAF actually does not recognize it as having World Record status, instead calling it a "world best" — but most people don't understand that distinction, and I suspect Jupiler Blue and the Brussels meet organizers would not have wanted to face the wrath of 47,500 angry fans demanding their beer. In fact, I theorize the organizers added the 2-mile to the program to make it easier to treat the crowd to a "world record" — broken records always make fans happy and bring back the crowds for the next year.