Seven of New Zealand’s strongest men and women will meet in Te Anau this Easter weekend to go head-to-head in an invitational Highland Games showdown.

The elite event, sponsored by PR Law, is a new addition to the Te Anau Tartan Festival programme, aimed to provide an exciting spectacle and complement the already popular family-friendly have-a-go highland games.

Festival convenor Kirsty Pickett said four men and three women had accepted the invitation and, collectively, they boasted some impressive credentials.

The line-up includes Ashburton’s Craig Manson – a two times New Zealand Highland Games Champion and current Australian champion who can also lay claim to being the New Zealand gumboot throwing champion.

Danny ‘Cage’ Devine, from Kurow, has been a formidable competitor on the highland games circuit for several years but reckons he’d have retired were he not always talked back into just one more competition.

Attesting to his strength, he was reluctantly thrust into the limelight back in 2004 as the shepherd who carried the merino “Shrek” from the hill he’d been hiding out on, successfully avoiding muster – and thus shearing – for six years. At 80kg Shrek was “heavy for a sheep but light for me”.

Local hopes will rest with Invercargill’s Callum McConachy, recently crowned Murihiku’s Strongest Man. A former New Zealand decathlon representative, McConachy placed 5th in his first outing at the Waipu Highland Games. He was runner-up New Zealand Highland Games champion in 2021.

The underdog for the event is Dylan Kawana-Waugh. Although he competed in some highland games in his youth, including winning the under-19 championship at the Turakina Highland Games, the 30-year-old is a relative newcomer to heavyweight events, having only joined the gym a little over a year ago.

The women’s competition features Christchurch’s Amy Ferris who comes from a powerlifting and strongman background and is already featuring prominently at national level in highland games.

Canterbury strongwoman Amy Ferris will be lining up against two other women in a special elite highland heavyweight competition at this year's Te Anau Tartan Festival. Photo: Supplied

American Lindsey Crazy Wolf, who now calls Gore home, has competed on the Colorado and New Mexico circuit and last year placed 3rd in the Oceania Championship while, the Masters weightlifting record holder but a relative newcomer to highland games, Karen Ladbrook, from Greenhills, rounds out the trio.

Unlike the family-friendly have-a-go event that the Tartan Festival is known for, the invitational competitors will use championship-grade weights and equipment.

This means the cabers they toss will be between 5m and 6m long, while the farmer’s walk will see them carrying upwards of 65kg in each hand.

Two highland games disciplines not previously seen at Te Anau – the stone put and weight over bar – will also be added for the elite competitors.

Fiordland Vintage Machinery member Doug Ramsay hard at work crafting logs into 6 metre highland cabers for this year's festival. Photo: Southland App

Pickett said sourcing the appropriate equipment had been made possible thanks to advice from the Hororata Highland Games organisers, and the hard graft of members of the Fiordland Vintage Machinery Club who had stepped up to make the cabers and weights that will be used in the competition.

“It’s been amazing the way the club members have so enthusiastically adopted this project. They have spent hours and hours down there, scraping bark off logs, sanding, cutting, weighing and measuring. We’re so grateful for their support,” she said.

The invitational heavyweight event will be a key component of the Te Anau Tartan Festival, staged alongside the have-a-go highland games on Saturday 8th April.

It boosts an already exciting programme, which features two exclusive performances of the Highland Dance Company of New Zealand’s Heart of the Highlands show just a week before they leave for performances in Virginia, USA.

Further information about the festival, show tickets, and entry details for the have-a-go competition can be found at the festival website: www.teanautartanfestival.co.nz