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MONTPELIER, Vt. (AP) -- Think your ratty old Converse high-tops are bad? Nine-year-old Sterling Brinkerhoff has you beat.
The boy from Benjamin, Utah, who likes to tromp around outside in his sneakers, looking for frogs and bugs, won top honors Tuesday in the 36th National Odor-Eaters Rotten Sneaker Contest, held in Montpelier, Vt.
Brinkerhoff beat out seven other young people who brought their smelly sneakers to compete in the contest. Judges rated the shoes for condition and smell, eventually settling on Brinkerhoff's torn, once-white low cuts as the worst of the worst.
He won $2,500, a trophy, an expense paid trip to New York City to see "Mary Poppins," and a supply of Odor-Eaters.
But he'll have to say goodbye to his stinky shoes: They'll be enshrined in the event's "Hall of Fumes."
(Copyright 2011 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)
