Athletics

When there is a Highland games competition, it is a celebration of the best of Scottish culture as well as an opportunity for men and women to try their hand at the various contests that are involved in the celebration. Over the years, these Scottish games have come to be recognized from the bagpipe music and the wearing of kilts, a traditional Scottish garment for men. In addition, the sporting and cultural contests are slowly making their way into mainstream society, with festivals garnering greater and greater numbers of attending visitors. Of these, it is the athletic games, with their various feats of strength, that are getting the biggest amount of notice.

Perhaps the biggest of the athletic Highland games is the caber toss. As a standard in nearly all Scottish culture celebrations, the competition in this event is quite prestigious among the men. To win the event, a man must throw a long pole (usually a telephone pole) in a rotating way where the larger end hits the ground in a perfect vertical position. The scores from the judges are based on which end lands first and how close to vertical the pole was when it hit the ground. To make the event more difficult, the men must first lift the large pole from the ground before beginning the throw.

Other heavy athletic events that are contested during a typical Scottish games competition are the stone put, Scottish hammer throw, and the sheaf toss. The stone put is very closely related to the modern Olympic event of the shot put and the hammer throw has the same connection. For the sheaf toss, a bundled amount of straw is hoisted with a pitchfork and thrown over an elevated bar. Both men and women compete in this event, but the women use a straw bundle that is half the weight of the men’s.