The world of competitive stone skipping has been sullied by cheaters.
Now, you may be asking yourself a couple questions, the first of which is probably, “There are competitive stone skippers?” The second of which might be, “How do you cheat at competitive stone skipping?”
To answer the first, yes, a world championship for stone skippers was recently held in the Scottish island of Easdale. And to answer the second, the BBC reports that some of the championship’s competitors were guilty of bringing their own “suspiciously circular” stones.
According to the competition’s rules, participants must pick their stone from the naturally occurring environment, and it must fit into the 3-inch diameter of an official measuring device known as the “ring of truth.”
However, officials uncovered several instances of “stone doctoring” to make them as circular as possible, thus better to skip across water.
“They had shaped it so that it was perfectly circular and fitted our three inch measurer,” says organizer Dr. Kyle Mathews. “As it’s a piece of metal, I don’t think we can blame it too much. The problem was we didn’t just notice at the time that they were suspiciously circular.”
The offending participants admitted to and apologized for the ruse, and were disqualified.