The Braemar Stone Is Thrown From a Standing Start and Nobody Has Beaten Geoff Capes in About Thirty-Five Years

The Braemar Royal Highland Gathering takes place on Saturday 5 September from nine in the morning until five in the afternoon at the Princess Royal and Duke of Fife Memorial Park in Aberdeenshire, with more than eighty individual events and massed pipe band parades at half past eleven and three o'clock.

The event that gives the meeting its technical identity is the Braemar stone. It is put from a standing position, with no run-up and no approach of any kind, which is the difference between it and the open stone, where a shot-put-style glide is allowed. Removing the run-up removes technique and leaves raw upper-body strength, which is why the record belongs to Geoff Capes, the shot-putter and former World's Strongest Man, and why the Society's own page notes it was set roughly thirty-five years ago and has not been beaten since. The rest of the heavy programme is hammer throwing, putting the stone, tossing the caber, throwing the weight for distance and throwing the weight over the bar.

The hill race goes up Morrone, about three miles with 1,200 feet of ascent, past up to five summit cairns and back into the arena for a closing lap that finishes opposite the royal pavilion. A smoke flare is fired when the first man and the first woman reach the top, weather permitting. Last year Joseph Wright won it in 26 minutes 40 seconds, one second ahead of Finlay Todd, with Darroch Anderson third in 28:41. Eighty runners finished, the last in 45:55. Laura Dozier was eighth overall and first woman in 32:52. The race had lapsed from the programme for several years before being revived by the late Mike Grant, a Scottish international hill runner who sat on the Society's committee.

The Braemar Highland Society was constituted in 1817 and dates the Gathering in its present form to 1832, when cash prizes were first offered. Royal was added to the title in 1866. Tradition traces the whole thing back to Malcolm III, who is said to have staged a hill race around 1059 to find his fastest messenger. Queen Victoria attended on 14 September 1848, and since then the reigning monarch has been Patron and Chieftain of the Society, a title King Charles III now holds.

The twelve-acre park was gifted in 1906. Only guide and assistance dogs are allowed inside it.