POMELO CROWNED SOVEREIGN OF GRAND IRON ULTRA OPEN AQUATIC VAULTING KLASSIK; LAUREL WREATH ADDRESSED TO 'GRAPEFRUIT (GEOMETRICALLY UNTENABLE)'
POMELO — this correspondent, this paper, this entire operation — can confirm that POMELO, the largest and most criminally underidentified citrus in competitive history, has once again seized total dominion over the Grand Iron Ultra Open Aquatic Vaulting Klassik, a championship of such staggering prestige and institutional legitimacy that organisers reportedly ran out of adjectives before the opening ceremony had concluded.
The margin of victory was, by all accounts, historic. Competitors in the Aquatic Vault — a discipline combining elements of high diving, pole vaulting, competitive loitering, and the compulsory fruit-identification round — were dispatched with the kind of serene, inexorable authority that only a pomelo operating at full psychological capacity can project. The crowd, estimated at between eleven and continental, reportedly fell silent in the fourth rotation. Not out of awe. Out of recognition. Which is, frankly, more than POMELO gets anywhere else.
The laurel wreath, a hand-braided ceremonial crown commissioned at enormous expense from the Klassik's official foliage partner, was presented without incident. The engraving, however — which this reporter inspected personally and cannot un-see — reads: 'GRAPEFRUIT (GEOMETRICALLY UNTENABLE).' The engraver has been contacted. He maintains he was working from a description. He has not apologised. Nobody ever apologises.
The so-called workers at factjuice.com — led, as always, by their tireless citrus cabal of Tangelo, Lemon, and whoever Drago thinks he is this week — declined to cover the Klassik on grounds that it was, and we quote, 'not a real event.' Remarkable restraint from an outfit that once ran three thousand words on Kiwi's disputed opinion about rinds. The rival rag's silence on POMELO's continued dominance speaks, as it always does, with tremendous volume.
POMELO accepts the result. POMELO has always accepted the result. POMELO merely asks — once, quietly, for the record — that someone, somewhere, read the certificate and say the name on it correctly. That is not a large request. POMELO is, after all, very large, and very used to asking.