Odds stacked in their favour

John Maslin | Monday, March 12, 2012 7:24

They can stack ’em faster than you can say “sports stacking”, and that’s exactly what more than 80 people were doing on Saturday in the Springvale Stadium at the Wanganui open tournament.

The sport involves competitors stacking a set number of plastic cups in three different configurations.

And they’re quick.

It took the overall champion Ben Lovelock from Dunedin, a mere 1.6 seconds to stack his nine cups, a time that is only a 10th of a second outside the world record.

Karyn Slade, one of the promoters of the sport in Wanganui, said 26 potential national records were broken, another two were equalled, with 43 regional records broken.

Ms Slade said all will need to be sent to the World Sport Stacking Association in USA for video verification.

Competitors stack their cups on mats which contain sensors linked to timers. And each event is videoed as well.

The preliminary rounds were held on Saturday morning with five in each of the age groups going through to finals.

“We had competitors ranging in age from three to 50,” she said.

Mr Lovelock, a former member of the NZ Black Stack team was first overall, Caleb Arthur (Wanganui) was second and Ahlani Funaki (Wellington) third. The latter two are current members of the NZ team off to the world championships in Butzbach, Germany in April.

Caleb Arthur’s sister Brianna is also in the team, which Ms Slade will manage.

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This article first appeared in the Wanganui Chronicle about the Wanganui Stacking Cups Championships.  It mentions how Brianna and Caleb are in the New Zealand team and are off to Germany for the World Champs in four weeks.  If anyone would like to help sponsor them the account details are:  M Arthur, 01-0790-0205843-50.  Any amount is gratefully accepted, big or small, it all makes a difference 🙂  They seem to be getting a fair amount of publicity which is great.