A New World Oyster Opening Champion Is Crowned

[matcom]

<snip>

GALWAY, Ireland (Reuters) - A minimum of blood and grit helped Norway unseat Sweden as world oyster-opening champions as contestants from 18 countries vied to prepare the prized shellfish as quickly and neatly as possible.

"It's the classic trade off between speed and quality," explains Terry Brennan as he peers through a magnifying glass.

"Grit in the oyster, that's a penalty right there," the chairman of the panel of seven judges adds.

Damage to the oyster's flesh, failure to detach it from the shell or traces of human blood also mean penalties for the knife-wielding competitors who have come from as far afield as Estonia, the United States, Australia and Japan.

The trick is not to rush things, according to the new world champion who opened his 30 oysters in 2 minutes 39 seconds and incurred just 22 seconds in penalty points.

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=573&ncid=573&e=2&u=/nm/20040927/od_nm/oysters_dc

[underpants]

1. Ugh! you know that really isn't that fast

That is one oyster every 4 seconds.

We used to go to the York river at low tide and we could fill up and trunk of my stepfather's car in just a few hours. I don't know if we were supposed to be doing that.

We shucked and shucked, it is one of those things that you can get really good at real quick of course the learning part can be really painful.