CelticFest Warwick 2025 hosts the Australian Highland Games Championships - come to CelticFest to cheer on the professional strongmen and women!
CelticFest Warwick is proud to once again host the Australian Highland Games Championships at the Warwick Showgrounds on the King’s Birthday long weekend in October 2025. At CelticFest Warwick 2023, Terry Sparkes won the Open Men’s title, qualifying him to travel to Norway in March 2024 to compete in the World Amateur Highland Games Championships.
The Scottish Highland Games are an annual spectacle based on strength and athleticism flavoured with abundant national pride. These games originated in Scotland centuries ago, most likely as a much more serious type of competition designed to find the best warriors, couriers, clan bodyguards and so on.Some of the heavy athletic events are believed to have their roots much farther back in history than the current organised highland games, having been used by ancient Celts as tests of strength and stamina as early as the third or fourth century.
The main events of the Highland Games that CelticFest visitors can choose an athlete to cheer on are Weight over the Bar, Putting the Stone, Hammer Throw, and everyone’s favourite, the Caber Toss.
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WEIGHT OVER THE BAR
Weight over the bar, or weight throw for height, is contested at highland games in Scotland and elsewhere, and at track and field events in Ireland.
Weight over the bar requires competitors to throw a weight over a raised bar. The object thrown is a 25.4kg weight with a handle at the end of a short bar which must be thrown using just one hand. Weight for Height is one of the greatest tests of explosive power in Heavy Events. The weight is thrown with one hand, overhead for maximum height. The athlete is given up to three attempts at each height and is still in the competition until he misses three attempts and is scored on the last successful height cleared. The winner is the athlete that clears the greatest height with the least amount of misses.
HAMMER THROW
The hammer throwing event features a hammer made from a metal ball weighing around 22 lb for men or 16 lb for women, attached to a wooden pole or handle.
Participants use the handle to whirl the hammer around their head and then throw it as far as they can.
PUTTING THE STONE
The Stone Put is one of the main Scottish heavy athletic events at modern-day Highland games gatherings. While similar to shot put, the Stone Put may use an ordinary stone or a steel ball. The weight of the stone will vary from 16 to 26 lb for men or 8 to 18 lb for women depending on which type of stone put event (Braemar stone or Open stone) is contested.
Robert Burns was keen on stone putting and apparently left his favourite putting stone at Ellisland Farm near Dumfries. If he saw anyone using it whilst he lived there he would call "Bide a wee" and join in the sport, always proving that he was the strongest man there.
CABER TOSS
The caber toss (Scottish Gaelic: tilgeil a' chabair) is a traditional Scottish athletic event in which competitors toss a large tapered pole called a caber. In Scotland, the caber is usually made from a larch tree and it can be between 5–6 metres tall and weighs 40–70 kilograms. The term caber derives from the Gaelic word cabar, which refers to a wooden beam. The person tossing the caber is called a "tosser" or a "thrower".
It is said to have developed from the need to toss logs across narrow chasms (in order to cross them), lumberjacks needing to transport logs by throwing them in streams, or by lumberjacks challenging each other to a small contest.
The record for most caber tosses in three minutes is currently held by the Canadian Danny Frame. He managed to perform 16 successful caber tosses on 20 July 2018 at the Heart of the Valley Festival in Middleton, Nova Scotia, Canada.
Armadale Highland Gathering and the Perth Kilt Run
Blairgowrie & Rattray Highland Games
MANHOOD STONES
New to the Highland Games at CelticFest Warwick 2025 are the Manhood Stones, or ‘Clach cuid fir’ in Scottish Gaelic. In the Manhood Stones challenge, competitors need to lift five stones of increasing weights onto the top of a barrel (ideally a whisky barrel!).
The challenge has its origins as a rite of passage for young men, who were welcomed into adulthood when they showed that they could lift their clan’s ‘testing stone’ to waist-height. In recent times, the lifting stones has more to do with strongmen (and women) proving their incredible strength, and there are many famous ones scattered through Scotland, including the Dinnie Stones at Potarch, the Inver Stone (Braemar), Flanna Stone (Glenlyon), and the Menzies Stone (Castle Menzies).
The McGlashen Stones/Atlas Stones are probably one of the more famous sets of stones, forming the basis of today’s Manhood Stones/Atlas Stones events. They are a set of five spherical stones, carved out of granite by stone-mason Stewart McGlashen in the 19th century, and they were first recorded as being used in a strength competition at a Highland Games event in 1963. The ‘Atlas Stones run’ has since become a feature of not only Highland Games but also of strongmen and women competitions.
At CelticFest Warwick 2025, both professional strongmen and women will compete in the Manhood Stones event, with the men’s stones starting at 50kg and going up to 130kg, and the women’s stones starting at 25kg and going up to 90kg.
WEIGHT FOR DISTANCE
Weight for distance is a weighted ball and chain measuring no more than 18” from handle to ball.
The competitor holding onto the weight with one hand uses a spinning motion inside of a rectangular box called a trig to gain momentum and throws the weight for maximum distance.
This event is split up into two events using both a heavyweight and lightweight implement.
The weight is thrown one-handed from a rectangular (4.5 feet by 9 feet) area behind a toe board or trig. The athlete must stay behind the trig at all times during the throw. The techniques vary, but usually involve a turning or spinning motion to increase momentum before the release. Each athlete gets three attempts, with places determined by the best throw.
The implement consists of a steel or lead weight (usually spherical or cylindrical) attached by a short chain to a metal handle. The handle may be a d-ring, a triangle or a ring. The size of the weight depends on the class of the competition.
For advanced male athletes, the light weight is 28 lb, or two stone (12.7 kg). The heavy weight is 56 lb, or four stone (25.4 kg). For all female athletes, the weights are 14 and 28 lb (6.35 and 12.7 kg). For male master class or senior athletes, the weights are 28 and 42 lb (12.7 and 19.05 kg).
