There was a sombre tone to a statement on Facebook last week. “Dear Stone Skimmers, it is with great regret that we announce that the organisers of the World Stone Skimming Championships (WSSC) have become aware of doctored stones being used by several competitors at this year’s event.”
The rules of the championships, which are held annually on the Scottish island of Easdale, state that participants can only use unaltered stones from the island’s native slate, but organiser Kyle Mathews told the BBC that there had been “rumours and murmurings of some nefarious deeds”.
It turned out that a sprinkling of the 400-strong entry had used “suspiciously circular” shaped stones, having (allegedly) ground them down to improve their “bounce potential”.
The story made international headlines. “A bucolic stone-skimming contest in Scotland is infiltrated by cheaters,” declared the New York Times, other outlets suggesting that the scandal had “rocked” the stone-skimming community, sending “ripples” right through it.
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After disqualifying the alleged cheaters, the WSSC updated the results of its various competitions, among the winners Paul Brice, who took the prestigious “Old Tosser” crown for entrants over 50 (low-bar alert), while among the outfits to sink without a trace in the team competition were “Mission Skimpossible”.
The one relief about this particular sporting scandal, distinguishing it from most down the years, is that the culprits owned up. “To give them their credit, they admitted their transgressions and deeply apologised for bringing the sport into disrepute,” said Mathews, aka “Toss Master”.
“Lessons have been learnt, we just want to put this behind us now.”
But “Skimgate” is just the latest in a long line of, well, quirky (alleged) cheating stories in sporting areas where you might not expect to find them.
If it’s any consolation to Mathews, this week brought news that the World Conker Championships has been inundated with entrants a year after its blue riband event was rocked by one of the quirkiest of them all. “Because of last year’s publicity it’s just gone ridiculous,” said its organiser, Charles Whalley.
You might recall that 82-year-old David “King Conker” Jakins was accused of cheating at last year’s championships in Northamptonshire when he was found to have a steel chestnut in his pocket. Mercifully, he was later exonerated, investigators accepting that he only had it for the craic. Conkers, then, ended up feeling almost as relieved as Curling after a Canadian international won her appeal against a positive test for the use of a performance-enhancing drug, one that would have had her sweeping like she was on speed.
Exonerated too was American chess player Hans Niemann after he was rather famously accused of using, well, remote-controlled vibrating anal beads to beat world champion Magnus Carlsen in a 2022 match. “Have you ever used them while playing chess?” Piers Morgan asked him. “Well, your curiosity is a bit concerning – maybe you’re personally interested, but I can tell you, no,” Niemann replied.
He later settled a defamation lawsuit he took against Carlsen, which left the out-of-pocket Norwegian sitting rather uncomfortably.
Chess, alas, has had no shortage of cheating scandals, among them the time Georgian Gaioz Nigalidze hid a phone with a chess app under toilet paper in a lavatory at the 2015 Dubai Open. After officials became suspicious about how many loo breaks he was taking, they searched the jacks and found the phone. He was banned for three years.
But fishing beats all. You know the fable about the honest fisherman, the one that says you should always be happy with what you have, that if you’re greedy you’ll end up losing it all? We’re looking at you, Matthew Clark.
Back in 2012 he won the Guernsey Bailiwick Bass Club tournament when he snared a whopping near-14-pound bass that outweighed the runner-up’s catch by a whole three pounds. But the runner-up thought Clark’s catch looked familiar, the distinct markings on its head convincing him that he’d seen it at the local aquarium. He visited the place, asked them to check the tank, and it was ... empty. Yes, Clark had stolen it.
Worse, he sold the creature to a local fishmonger, so all the aquarium got back was the head and the tail. Clark was given 100 hours of community service, his reputation in the fishing world in the tank.
But nothing, surely, tops the tale of Chase Cominsky and Jacob Runyan. Having achieved little to nothing in the world of competitive fishing, all of a sudden they couldn’t stop winning. It’d be like a 100m runner reducing their personal best from 13.7 to 8.2 in a wet week.
The more they won – and they were big prizes too – the more suspicious their rivals became, to the point where they were both asked to do lie detector tests. Quite a test Cominsky had too. “They were asking him if he’s had sex with farm animals,” Runyan recalled. “It was goofy. I remember thinking what is the f***ing point of this?”
They proclaimed their innocence until a September day in 2022 when their winning catch at an event in Ohio was examined by the tournament director. He felt a hard lump on the side of one of the fish, opened it with a knife and out fell a lead weight. He checked more and it was the same, weights tumbled out. Along with fillets of other fish.
The gathered anglers reacted calmly. Kidding. “THAT’S ****ING THEFT, CHEATIN’ MOTHER*****S! CALL THE ****IN’ COPS!” The cops did indeed need to be called, to ensure Cominsky and Runyan weren’t filleted.
The pair ended up pleading guilty to cheating and received a sentence of 10 days in jail, a fine, a three-year suspension of their fishing licenses, and the confiscation of a boat worth €100,000 that they had won.
“The most ignorant decision I’ve ever made in my life,” Runyan told the judge, but when there’s “bounce potential”, and the chance of winning wads of cash or, at the very least, glory, the temptation will always be there. Such is human nature.
But, as a man by the name of Tom Morton put it under the World Stone Skimming Championships statement on Facebook, “Let he who is without sin ...”
