Stone cold competition at Lake Hāwea
- Claire Inkson
- May 21
- 5 min read
An icy start on the shores of Lake Hāwea did little to deter the crowds gathering for the inaugural Aotearoa Stone Skimming Championships.
The event, held on May 16, was presented by Novus Glass supporting Melanoma New Zealand.
Wrapped in puffer jackets and beanies, spectators lined the lake edge while competitors, some in flamboyant costumes and armed with names like “Fat Boy Skim”, prepared to battle it out for the national title.
And while stone skimming might be a much-loved Kiwi childhood pastime, make no mistake. This was a serious competition.
The winners will now head to Scotland in September to represent New Zealand at the World Stone Skimming Championships, becoming part of the country’s first-ever “Black Rock” team.
Hosted at Lake Hāwea Station’s private lakeside venue known as The Hide, the event drew around 150 competitors and another 300 spectators for a day that mixed genuine sporting intensity with plenty of humour, community spirit and lakeside chaos.
Stone skimming as a sport is gaining traction worldwide, with competitors judged on both distance and accuracy. To qualify as a legal skim, the stone must bounce at least twice and remain within the designated lane before its final distance is measured.
By the end of the day, Queenstown’s Abbey MacDonald had claimed the women’s title and the furthest skim of the competition after launching an astonishing 72-metre throw during pool play, outperforming more than 120 male competitors in the process.
In the men’s final, The Rock Drive host Jay Reeve stunned the field with a 51-metre skim to take the title in dramatic fashion after another competitor’s longer throw veered out of bounds on its final skip.
For organiser Richie Laming, seeing the idea finally come to life was surreal.
“By four o’clock, with history being made and crowning the first-ever female and male stone skimming champions in New Zealand, we could have around 350 people here,” he said during the event.
“You see the gathering, the hot tubs, the braziers, the grandstand, the launch pad, the stone selection area. It’s all been brought to fruition. It’s overwhelming, but also really good to see it in reality.”
The idea for the championships was sparked after last year’s bizarre cheating scandal at the World Stone Skimming Championships in Scotland unexpectedly pushed the niche sport into global headlines.
Laming realised New Zealand, despite generations of Kiwis growing up skimming stones at rivers and lakes, had never hosted its own national competition.
“We’re a land of water, we’re a land of beautiful geology, and we’ve got stones at our disposal,” he said.
“We almost have an innate investment in stone skimming.”
And yes, organisers took cheating seriously.
A dedicated anti-cheating team dubbed “Taskforce Skim” inspected competitors’ rocks, while each stone was photographed before competition began.
Despite the serious judging process, the atmosphere remained relaxed and unmistakably Kiwi.
Competitors travelled from around the country, with some treating the event like elite sport and others simply embracing the absurdity of it all.
Among them was Aucklander Craig Jackson, who won his place through a radio competition after submitting a comedy video involving gumboots, mud, AI-generated explosions and a custom song called Skippy Jackson.
“I would like to be a representative sportsman for New Zealand wearing the black blazer,” he laughed.
“And if it has to be as a black stone skimmer, then so be it.”
Alongside the competition itself were food trucks, luxury sheepskin bean bags, hot tubs, live commentary, novelty events and free skin cancer checks from Melanoma New Zealand’s mobile clinic.
The fundraising partnership with Melanoma New Zealand was a natural fit, organisers said, particularly given how much time rural New Zealanders spend outdoors.
“That’s another added layer of alignment for us,” Laming said.
“We often associate melanoma with blue skies, crystal-clear water and summertime. But as farmers, we’re spending long hours out in that sun every day. Lake Hāwea Station is a farming business, so that connection is very real for us.”
Melanoma NZ chief executive Andrea Newland said the concept immediately stood out.
“The word that popped into my head was ‘epic’,” she said.
“It’s such a quintessentially Kiwi thing to do. It made sense with our cause and our brand, beautiful countryside, the outdoors, because that’s very relevant when you’re talking about skin cancer.”
On the day, nurses carried out 89 free skin checks, identifying 13 suspicious lesions, including two suspected melanomas.
Newland said events like this helped start important conversations.
“There’s no reason we can’t have fun while getting these messages out there,” she said.
“For farmers especially, prevention and regular skin checks are so important. A lot of people find melanoma themselves first. Early detection really is everything.”
Melanoma New Zealand will also have a strong presence at Fieldays this year, with two mobile skin check vans onsite and nurses offering free skin checks and advice throughout the event.
For Laming, though, the biggest success was seeing people brought together around something simple.
“There’s a whole bandwidth of New Zealand society here today,” he said.
“Farmers, corporate people, serious stone skimmers, families. Everyone’s here together.”
And it seems this may only be the beginning.
Laming said he hopes to grow the championships beyond Lake Hāwea in future years, with regional qualifying events potentially taking place around the country in the lead-up to the national final.
“Lake Hāwea will always be the home of stone skimming in New Zealand,” he said.
“But we’d love to see regional competitions and age-grade events develop as well. We think this could become something really special.”
And judging by the crowds gathered along the lake edge, the inaugural event may have skipped far further than anyone expected.
The results of the finals were:
Open Female Category
1st Place: Abbey MacDonald – 42m
2nd Place: Marg Spite – 35m
3rd Place: Emily Inglis – 30m
Open Male Category
1st Place: Jay Reeve – 51m
2nd Place: Olie Fey – 48m
3rd Place: James Acfie – 46m
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