The shirtless monument climb at the Naval Academy is America’s best spectator sport

On Monday afternoon several hundred Navy plebes worked together to scale a 21-foot obelisk slicked with lard on the grounds of the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis. It is a thrilling event. Here are the plebes running to the Herndon Monument.

And here is the obelisk, the plebes and the lard — technically vegetable shortening, but that doesn’t sound visceral enough — a couple minutes into the climb.