Castle Stones

The Castle Stones are a set of Atlas Stones used at Giants Live Strongman competitions. Castle Water sponsors this Atlas Stone run which is where the name Castle Stones comes from. They started sponsoring the event at the start of the 2020 season¹.

Other than the name, the Castle Stones event is simply an Atlas Stone run.

Rules

Athletes stand at one end of the platform waiting for the referee’s whistle. Once the whistle blows, the athletes run to the oposite end of the platform to lift the first (and lightest) stone to the tallest slot on the platform.

Once the athlete has placed the stone, they can move on to the next (heavier) stone, which then gets lifted on to the next highest platform.

The winner is the athlete that lifts all 5 stones in the fastest time. Athletes have 60 seconds to lift the stones. The time is recorded for each successfully loaded stone. This means athletes can be placed even if they fail to lift all 5 stones.

Weights

There are two different ‘sets’ of stones used. The ‘light’ set and the ‘heavy’ set.

The light set starts at 100kg, and reaches 180kg in 20kg increments — 100kg, 120kg, 140kg, 160kg, 180kg (220 lb, 265 lb, 308 lb, 353 lb, 397 lb).

Whereas the heavy set starts at 120kg and finishes at 200kg — 120kg, 140kg, 160kg, 180kg, 200kg (265 lb, 308 lb, 353 lb, 397 lb, 440 lb).

Separate records are held for the light and heavy sets.

On the October 21st 2023 at the World Tour Finals, Giants Live replaced the heavy set of stones with a new set created by Atlas Endurance. The weights and diameters of the stones are the same. Giants Live opted to carry over the old record to the new set.

Records

Tom Stoltman holds the record for the fastest light-set Castle Stone run at 16.01 seconds, which he achieved at Britain’s Strongest Man 2020. He beat the previous record held by Mateusz Kieliszkowski by .06 seconds.

Hafþór Björnsson holds the record for the fastest heavy-set stone run at 17.54 seconds. Achieved at Europe’s Strongest Man 2017.

Hafþór’s record was set before Castle Water sponsored the event. But it’s the same stone run.

References

Giants Live - Which strongman owns the Atlas Stones world record?