Richie Lang: Lake Hāwea Station Tourism Manager on New Zealand's first National Stone Skimming Championship

A classic pastime is getting its own national championship. 

The Stone Skimming Nationals will be held next May at Lake Hāwea, with the winners heading on to the World Championship in Scotland. 

Around 150 people are expected to compete, with more than 100 spectating the event.  

Lake Hāwea Station’s Tourism Manager Richie Lang told Heather du Plessis-Allan originally there wasn’t a huge amount of interest in hosting the event, but then a cheating scandal at the World Stone Skimming Championships came around and put the sport on the world map.  

After that, he said, they thought it was time to strike.  

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
If you want to become a sports champion but haven't
quite found your thing yet, I might have something for you.
New Zealand is going to host our very first stone
Skimming National Championship next year in May. It's going to
be at Lake Harwire. The winners will head along to
the World champs in Scotland. Now, Richie Lang is Lake
harwea station's tourism manager and is with us morning.

Speaker 2 (00:18):
Richie, good morning to hear that from the shores of
Lake Harwier. It's wonderful to be with you.

Speaker 1 (00:23):
It's good to chat to you. Is this your idea?

Speaker 2 (00:26):
Yeah, it was, And look to be honest, if you
took to the station personnel, there wasn't a huge amount
of interest. Initially they saw the merit, but I went
ahead and contacted the World Stone Skimming Championships. They offered
us two entries. I took to Melanoma, New Zealand. They
wished to be the charity. We wish to raise thirty
thousand dollars on the day. And then there was a
serendipitous event where a cheating scandal came around the World's

(00:46):
Stone Skimming Championships, putting stone skimming on the world map.
We thought it was a time to strike. We have
a vehicle to be able to host these type of
events here at Lake harwea station, so we wish to
do that. In May twenty twenty six.

Speaker 1 (01:00):
I read about that stone skimming the cheating at the time.
This is pretty hard out for an event that I
thought would just be friendly. But what was it were
they were?

Speaker 2 (01:08):
They?

Speaker 1 (01:08):
Was it basically trying to make their stones as round
as possible?

Speaker 2 (01:11):
Yeah, look it was a stone tampering scandal, Heather. So
what actually happened is they rounded off the stones. And
I have to say now doing my research, probably from
an experienced stone skimmers. So I've got a Lake Harwire
stone in front of me, and the beautiful thing here
is that they're very flat, but they're not perfectly round.
You don't want them perfectly round because you want the

(01:33):
forefinger involved to maximize leverage and spin on the stone,
so you maximize the skips across the water so you
can go as far as possible. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:41):
I hear what you're saying, and I'd thought about that
as well. You need a little hook in there, don't you.
So how are you going to stop them from I mean,
do you think that We're just like, do you need
to have some way to stop them from doing this
or do you think people are just going to be
less competitive and weird in New Zealand.

Speaker 2 (01:54):
Yeah, look we have I've designated a task force task
Force SKIM. I don't know if you've met these guys
here that guys and girls, but almost the essays equivalent
of the stones coming world hyper vigilant individuals. We're going
to have a registration process. They're going to be patrolling
the area and we're going to make sure that participants
are collecting the stones from a designated area. We're going

(02:15):
to photograph the stones and then we're going to photograph
again before they throw, and then for the play skinners,
we can verify that they were using the same stones.
So yeah, if they do want to cheat, then yeah,
let them have it. It's a very very high chance
they will be caught. But any publicity is good. Publicly
behave all Right, So.

Speaker 1 (02:32):
How do people get in if they want to be
a world champion?

Speaker 2 (02:35):
Yeah, so if you go to Melanoma dot org dot
NZ and this is a call to communities around New Zealands.
We wish to have any New Zealander there on the
day and look, tickets are going like hotcakes. We're about
halfway through so far, so tickets are still available. Go
to Melanoma dot org dot nz you can register your
interests to receive the ticketing linked either as a spectator

(02:56):
or as a participant on the day.

Speaker 3 (02:57):
Oh you're very good at it, Richie, Thank you very much.
Good luck that Richie Lang Lake Howe are stationed tourism manager.
I mean, actually you know that even it's an activity
you can do with the kids, So how good would
that be? Start of the winter down there.

Speaker 2 (03:08):
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