Tim the Yowie Man checks out the Golden Gumboot Throwing Competition after a 28-year hiatus from the Murrumbateman Field Days.
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00:00After a 28-year hiatus, the much-missed Murrumbateman Field Day's
00:06Golden Gumboot Throwing Competition is back this October.
00:11But just how
00:14exactly do you throw a gumboot?
00:17You could always study historic footage from the
00:211996 event, but unless you want everyone in the crowd to don a helmet, I wouldn't bother.
00:30At least this official got a workout retrieving a boot from the top of a truck.
00:34You could also gate crash a training session where Tom White and Joe Shipley from the Murrumbateman Field Days are
00:42secretly finessing their own techniques. But even then, you'd probably still be at a loss. Do you throw underarm?
00:50sidearm?
00:52Overarm? Just how do you do it?
00:55Well, short of jet-setting across the Tasman to the gumboot throwing capital of the world in Taihape in New Zealand,
01:02the best advice I've managed to find for any wannabe competitors
01:07comes from Professor Ben Buchler of the ANU Research School of Physics.
01:13It's pretty simple. You just gotta throw as hard as you can.
01:15You want the boot to move as fast through the air as you can make it go.
01:20It's going to go the furthest and then you want to be traveling through the air in the right orientation.
01:24And so I think you want to minimize the surface area. So probably sole forwards. It's going to minimize the surface area.
01:29That'd probably be the worst.
01:31I don't know if you could throw it with the side forward. That'd be really hard. Because the other thing to get this part moving as fast as it will go,
01:38you've got to use the mechanical advantage of this long leg bit. It's kind of like throwing a ball for a dog.
01:44We have those throwers. This is the handle. This is the center of mass up here.
01:48You give it a toss like that and you get the center of mass moving faster than your hand.
01:52And that's going to give you the longest throw.
01:54And how would you release it out of your hand?
01:56Are we going to do, do you think, an underarm throw, sidearm or like those hammer throwers at the Olympics?
02:00Yeah, look, I think it'll probably depend on the person. The lighter weight person will have more trouble getting this thing moving real fast.
02:08A discus kind of throw, a hammer throw,
02:11if you want to get maximum hand velocity, whatever works for you. If you're a really big guy,
02:14then maybe going overarm might work for you.
02:16But you just want to maximize your hand velocity and then the velocity of the center of mass is that you release it from your hand.
02:22Now, you sound like you know what you're talking about. How many times have you thrown a gumboot, Ben?
02:26Zero times, Tim. Zero.
02:2925.10 metres.
02:31Put that on your men's shoe, but when you're an old man, you'll be able to say,
02:34when I was a young fella, our gumboots were gold.
02:44you