Recap: Michael Salomone Wins the First-Ever National Pineapple Championship

The first nationally sanctioned championship in the sport's history was held on September 18, 2021, fittingly in Charlotte, North Carolina — the city where the whole sport began eighteen months earlier in a locked-down apartment kitchen. Twelve states sent qualifying competitors, a number the Council's founders privately admitted exceeded their expectations by a wide margin.

Michael Salomone won it in 0:58, a full six seconds ahead of California's Jake Winslow, who took second. Georgia's Derek Oyelaran rounded out the podium in third. It was Salomone's first sanctioned national title, and the moment the Council's brand-new ranking system had its first official No. 1.

'It didn't feel real,' Salomone said afterward. 'A year ago this was a bit between roommates. Now there's a bracket, judges, a rulebook.' Asked whether he expected to defend the title, he demurred — but the record shows he'd go on to do exactly that in three of the next four years.