HALF MOON BAY, Calif. — Minnesota's world record-holding pumpkin grower Travis Gienger won his fourth Safeway World Championship Pumpkin Weigh-Off and third title in a row, as his pumpkin weighed just 6 pounds more than the runner-up.
The tension amped up on Monday, Oct. 14, when the second-to-last pumpkin grown by Brandon Dawson of Santa Rosa, California, weighed in at 2,465 pounds to take the lead.
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"Only one more pumpkin to go," said Cameron Palmer, president of the organizing committee for the festival and emcee of the weigh-off, as the theme to "Rocky" played over the speakers.
The entrance music should've been the "Notre Dame Victory March," as Gienger's pumpkin named Rudy was lifted next to the stage. The Anoka native said he named the pumpkin this summer when he thought it had no shot at making it to championship-level weight.
"If you were to talk to me in June, I didn't think I'd even be here," Gienger said. "So being on this stage with family and friends gathered in this crowd, I mean, you can't ask for anything more."
"Rudy, Rudy, Rudy," Palmer chanted to the crowd as Gienger's pumpkin went through its final inspection before hitting the scale. Pumpkins with even the slightest crack are ruled out of the running.
"Even if there's one rotten spot, it's disqualified," Gienger said in 2022, the year he grew his pumpkin named Maverick, which was the heaviest pumpkin in the U.S. that year at 2,560 pounds. "You can't have a pinhole, you can't have anything. They inspect them pretty good, especially if you're anywhere near the world record."
Gienger won his first championship at Half Moon Bay in 2020 with a pumpkin named Tiger King. He followed up his first-place finish with Maverick in 2022 with a world-record pumpkin named Michael Jordan last year, which weighed 2,749 pounds.
It's now an annual tradition that each October, Gienger, with his wife and daughter, drives his pumpkin over 35 hours to California for the contest, considered to be the Super Bowl of pumpkin weigh-offs. He said he spends "a couple grand" on gas for the trip.
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The current world record holder watched from the stage as a forklift fitted with special harnesses lifted his gargantuan gourd carefully onto a 5-ton-capacity digital scale, overseen by officials from the San Mateo County Agricultural Commissioner's Office of Weights, Sealers, and Measures. Half Moon Bay’s weigh-off serves as the officially sanctioned Great Pumpkin Commonwealth site.
In the minutes before his pumpkin was weighed, Gienger responded to the odds of Rudy breaking his own world record.
"There's a lot of pressure there in itself, but we're just hoping for a top-10 finish right now," he said. "If you focus on soil biology and soil health, the rest should take its course."
He was then asked what it's been like for him this year, and to be watched by people from around the world along with getting high praise from his home state.
"It's been pretty phenomenal. I mean, everywhere you go, people kind of recognize you," Gienger said. "When I went back home, the state of Minnesota declared Oct. 28 Travis Gienger Day, and that was pretty cool."
Comeback pumpkin
"This is the moment we're waiting for, Travis Gienger of Minnesota, here you go," Palmer said. "TWO-FOUR-SEVEN-ONE!"
At 2,471 pounds, Gienger's pumpkin, Rudy, took home first place, earning him $22,239 in prize money.
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"We didn't get off to the greatest of starts," Gienger said of his pumpkin this year. "We needed it to be a come-from-behind story."
Rudy's next stop will be in Los Angeles, where a team of professional carvers will take to it for a Halloween event.
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