How This Guy Became The Best Rock Skipper On The Planet

[Wendy] [buoyant guitar music] How many times

have you ever seen one stone skip?

[Spectator] Whoa.

[Participant] 'Cause that is my best throw, ever.

The most I ever skipped, verified, was 88 times,

and that currently, is the standing world record

for about the last 10 years.

Whoa, yeah, yeah. Whoa.

[crowd cheers and claps]

[Wendy] Meet Kurt Steiner, a world champion,

Guinness World record holder

and master of the physics of stone skipping.

Stone skipping is not big enough to support

anybody's lifestyle, even mine. [laughs]

It's a labor of love and a hobby passion.

I entered my first tournament in 2000,

and that's kind of where I got serious about it.

Kind of stuck with me for the last 20, 25 years.

[Wendy] And it's caught some people's attention,

including Wired ourselves, in 2019.

And every time Kurt goes to throw

he has to consider five things.

Speed, the faster you throw it, the more speed it has.

The spin, is how fast the rock is spinning.

You can change how fast it's spinning

by your delivery and how you hold the stone as well.

The tilt angle, if this is the front

then the tilt angle is how much of this

you add to the stone.

The attack angle is from where you let go

to where it hits the water.

The twist angle is like the roll in an airplane

and it plays into distance throwing and wind conditions.

Interestingly enough, when it comes to a lot of the numbers,

I'm not the guy who pays attention to it.

How many skips was it?

I don't know.

You're the judge.

I'm just here to throw.

When I come up to the shore to throw a stone

the three things I'm looking at are the wind direction.

I try to keep it to my back.

The breeze from behind helps

so you can release it more horizontally.

The water surface, there's no real pattern in it.

The most you have is a kind of random distribution of tips.

They can actually keep the rock riding up on the water.

And the other thing you look at is your footing.

Is it sloped?

Is it slippery?

Is it sand, is it dirt?

Are you skipping off a rock?

So- Have you ever fallen in?

Oh yeah, fallen in, broke my knee cap,

all kinds of, yeah.

If your plant foot goes, you're just outta control.

So I'm using a set of thin, light rocks

and I'm gonna throw in what I call, a whip delivery.

I will be pulling down and then driving up against that

as I torque, and that'll snap my hand out.

I'm gonna be trying to land close

and get a dense skip pattern here.

Something to that effect, if you can see it.

[water splashes] Oh,

what happened there was my twist was a little bit off.

I came in with a little too much of this angle

and it bit the water

instead of skipping off the back edge.

I'm trying to really land it close here.

[water splashes] There we go.

See now, I probably didn't land

but 10 feet out in front of me.

So now, I'm gonna switch up to a little heavier stone,

but I'm gonna be throwing more horizontally across my body.

This gives you a little more velocity

and a little more depth.

As a caveat, I will say, I'm still in physical therapy

from shoulder surgery, so don't tell my doctor.

[gentle piano music] At the core of it,

to me, stone skipping is really just

an appeal to get outside.

Don't take my word for it, just do it.

A lot of people know it but don't do it

because they don't think they have the time.

Make the time for it, it'll pay off.

I think what's not understood

is how impressive it can be when it's taken

above the level of a picnic.

A simple thing, through a mastery, becomes a really visual,

spiritual kind of art form. [spectators murmur]

It's a way of making joy out of nothing,

and that can't be valueless, [laughs] right?

[cheerful music]

Here I am, this is where I get most of my stones.

Southeast shore of Lake Erie, lots of shale on the cliffs.

They fall out, they get polished up,

they make skipping stones, like here, see that?

That caught my eye.

Look how flat that surface is, compared to the rest here.

So the next thing I want to do is flip it over

and hope it's still good, and it is.

So right there we have the makings of a really good rock.

It's flat, it's got a little bit of a curved top.

This edge right here, is not too aggressive.

It's not so sharp that if I drag my finger on it,

it'll hurt me.

This stone demonstrates sharp versus soft,

my terms, but it happens to have split

so that the top surface here, is rounded,

and the other side has a very sharp transition

from the face to the side.

So if I were throwing in rougher water

I might consider throwing the soft side down

because it can kinda run over those ripples

a little more efficiently, like a bigger tire wheel.

However, any truly sharp stone

is a bit of a slot machine, [laughs] right?

'Cause even a millimeter of a water ripple,

it looks huge to the stone.

This is oversized, but I just happened to see this.

If this was a skipping stone, you see this lobe here?

And you see how this angle here, is a sharper angle

than from here, around this way.

If you think of that like the tooth of a saw,

if it's spinning this way, it's going to bite more.

If it were spinning this way,

it's what I would call feathering,

the tip follows the rotation.

If I was right-handed, this is perfect

'cause the tip is following my natural spin.

But if I was left-handed,

now, I'm spinning it this way and it's gonna bite.

So you can always convert a rock

from right-handed to left-handed by flipping it over.

The problem is sometimes, the bottom surface

isn't the one you want down.

So stones can be very conflicted.

I think the most prestigious stone skipping

requires you to learn why you want a stone.

And that means you need to be able to select

from infinite variety and know how to predict

what it's going to do,

based on your experience and your understanding

of the mechanics of it.

Here we go, this is a pretty bad rock.

You know, if I had to pick which side is up

I would want to go this way.

But if I do, it's got a tooth, so that's bad.

If you were in a boat and you stuck your hand down,

that's kind of what this edge is gonna do.

Every time it comes around, it's gonna grab the water.

I have some correspondence

with some pretty high-power physicists,

and I swear I have told them some things,

that they actually kind of frowned at me at.

I don't wanna toot my own horn

but I believe that there are certain things I discovered

in stone skipping behavior, or object skipping

that, you know, other people come out and say,

look what we discovered.

And I'm like, I told ya.

[Wendy] Kurt's understanding

of the physics of stone skipping

led him to the world record, and also a year's long rivalry.

Most of stone skipping now, kind of picks up

around 2013-ish.

But for 10, 12 years before that,

Russ Byars and I were also kind of having this go-round.

So back in 2000 we were in the same tournament.

I edged him the first year,

second year though he got in.

And then for the next decade

we kinda sharpened each other up, you know?

We were rivals.

But then the movie was made,

Skip Stones For Fudge,

and we shared a hotel room in Boston.

What I liked about Russ is I could just talk to him,

bluntly, and he would answer me bluntly,

and none of it would get personal.

And from that day on we were like, really good friends.

Yeah.

[gentle music]

Unfortunately he did succumb to cancer

very shortly after that.

So it was not long after I felt like

I'd had this breakthrough.

I was always kind of a standoffish social person anyway,

so for him to get into me that way

was a major event in my life.

And so when he died so shortly after,

I felt like that was breached, it just made me sad.

But it shows you that the power of connection

that can happen when these kinds of minds get together,

and this kind of activity, it's a beautiful thing.

[upbeat music]

[Wendy] Kurt continually tries to expand

the community he loves, and teach new people

about rock skipping.

So he took me out on a chilly Pennsylvania afternoon

and tried to teach me how to throw like a pro.

Well, I'm gonna give you a stone here.

And the first thing we do when we're doing this

is just figure out where are you gonna hold that.

I'd like to see what you do naturally or naively,

and then we'll go from there.

[Wendy] I would do something like this?

Kinda looking at it,

and you're looking at, for basically, your pointiest point.

So that's a possibility, but I kinda like that one.

See that little bump there? Uh huh.

[Kurt] Put that like right in the middle of the pad

of your pointer there, yes. There?

That's about right. Okay.

Also, can you get your thumb up on top more?

With that wrist more in your, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Now, first of all, just holding it roughly like that,

just see how it looks when you throw it.

Okay. Whoa. [water splashes]

[Kurt] There you go.

See, the grip already, you're underway.

That's so much farther than I've ever done.

So now, the only thing I'm gonna say,

do it a little different, is to squeeze a little bit harder

and maybe lower the front edge of your stone down

just like, maybe about there.

Okay. See what that does.

And let her rip. [upbeat music]

There it is. [laughs]

What? Ah, that's pretty good.

So Wendy, you're halfway to being a pro.

Practice and experimentation,

paying attention to what you're doing,

and adjustments, won't be long, you'll be an addict.

[Kurt and Wendy laughs]

[Wendy] Kurt's love of rock skipping

is a constant in his life,

and the act of throwing is its own sanctuary from the world.

When I'm standing there and I'm either

about to throw a rock or I have been,

it's one of those stop time things.

You kinda feel alone, but not in a lonely way.

To me, it's a lot of forgetting.

It's forgetting how you got there, why you're there,

what you gotta do when you leave.

When I was real small and I was throwing,

I used to project myself into the stone.

Like, I couldn't surf, but I could surf as a stone.

I guess, one thing I don't do

is think about how I'm thinking when I'm standing up there.

[laughs] I just, I feel it, let it go and it's all good.

[music ends]