Minnesota Professor’s 2,471-Pound Gourd Triumphs in Annual Pumpkin Weighing Competition

A 2,471-pound gourd from Minnesota triumphed at the annual Safeway World Championship pumpkin weigh-in.

Its producer, Travis Gienger, faced the moment of truth on October 14th when his orange giant was hoisted onto the scale. Gienger’s pumpkin, also known as “Rudy,” was one of the last to be weighed.

“We’re just hoping to finish in the top ten now,” he told Minnesota Star Tribuneby Tim Harlow at the event, held in Half Moon Bay, California. “There’s a lot of pressure.”

Although another gourd came close – Californian Brandon Dawson’s 2,465-pound pumpkin – Gienger’s secured the lead. He has now won the contest three years in a row – and four times in total. Last year, Gienger’s entry also set a world record for the heaviest pumpkin, weighing in at 2,749 pounds.

The first pumpkin weigh-in in Half Moon Bay was held 50 years ago, in 1974. In a statement, Half Moon Bay officials challenged distant Circleville, Ohio, to the pumpkin weigh-in after both cities declared themselves the pumpkin capital of the world. pumpkin . The winner of the first contest was John Minaidis of Half Moon Bay, whose pumpkin weighed just 132 pounds.

Hailing from Anoka, Minnesota, Gienger, 44, is a horticulture professor at Anoka Technical College. Along with the world record for heaviest pumpkin, Gienger also shares the world record for largest pumpkin by circumference. (His creation, carved to resemble an eagle, had a circumference of 242 inches.) He has been growing pumpkins for nearly 30 years.

“My dad was growing little pumpkins — say, 100 pounds — and (I) got into gardening in general and decided, hey, this is something I want to try,” Gienger told Minnesota Public Radio’s Cathy Wurzer and Ellen Finn. “So when I was 14, I grew to 447 pounds, and that was really big for the time, and (I’ve) been doing it ever since.”

Gienger’s pumpkin growing hobby proved profitable. Last year he won $30,000 in Half Moon Bay for breaking the world record, and he won $22,239 this year – $9 per pound for Rudy. As Gienger tells the Tribunethe prize money will cover the “few thousand” dollars he spent on gas to transport his pumpkin from Minnesota to California.

Gienger planted Rudy – named after the football player who inspired a film of the same name – in April this year, and the pumpkin has had a slow summer.

“I thought there would be nothing in June,” says Gienger Coastal News‘Sebastian Miño-Bucheli. “If you had talked to me in June, I would have said, ‘No, our weather is too wet, too cold.’”

But the pumpkin managed to survive, gaining just enough volume before Gienger packed it up and headed for California. However, Half Moon Bay is not your final destination. As Gienger tells the TribuneRudy is heading to Los Angeles, where professional carvers will turn him into a jack-o’-lantern.