Highland Games heavyweight competition

Chinese competitor Soso lets go as his overbalancing caber falls backward during the Highland heavyweight competition at the Waipu Highland Games on Monday.

The big Asian won the Highland stone event and was placed sixth overall among the eight competitors.

Soso is in New Zealand training with Li Ling, rated second among women's shot putters in China. She is coached by Kirsten Hellier, who formerly coached world women's shot put champion Valerie Adams.

Patrick Hellier won the second event, outdistancing everyone with his 16lb (7.25kg) Caledonian hammer throw and settling down supporters who had feared his 15-year reign as New Zealand Highland heavyweight champion could be ending.

McFarlane was runner-up in the hammer throw. The 24-year-old, who will begin studying for a masters degree in theology next month, is back training after 18 months out with a shoulder injury,

Third was Phil Jansen, a 44-year-old from Wellington making his debut in Highland Games. He is experienced at throwing hammers of the athletics track variety.

Hellier won the third event, throwing the 56lb (25.4kg) weight for distance. Two metres tall Auckland security guard Reuben de Jong was second and the Australian Highland heavyweight champion, policeman Craig Reid, was third.

Reid, 44, beat Hellier - an Auckland policeman - in two events at the Waipu Games last year, but expected a back injury to stop him repeating that success yesterday.

The same trio took the honours in the caber toss, won by Hellier with Reid runner-up and de Jong third.

De Jong later won the 56lb weight for height throw and McFarlane won the 28lb weight for distance throw.

When the points were tallied Hellier had won his 16th title by a comfortable margin with McFarlane, 2; De Jong, 3; Reid, 4; Peter Mayne, of Whangarei, 5; Soso, 6, Jansen, 7, and Matt Rossiter, of Auckland, 8.

PHOTO/MICHAEL CUNNINGHAM