"This year, we're making a bit more of it and have expanded it into an event called the Cromwell Cherry Festival," Cromwell Promotions member Karen Lindsay said.
The promotions group hosted the first national cherry-pip spitting championship in 2006 and has staged the event annually since then, in early December. The winner represents New Zealand at the Australasian cherry-pip spitting championship held at the Cherry Harmony Festival in Perth the following week.
This year, the New Zealand championship will be held on January 4 in the Cromwell mall, with the winner attending the 2011 Australasian championship.
"We changed the date because there's not many cherries around in early December and there will be more visitors and more potential competitors if we hold the championship at peak holiday time," promotions group secretary Terry Emmitt said.
"Also, when we hold the event in early December, the winner only has a few days to get themselves organised before they head off to Australia, so it's a bit of a rush."
Mrs Lindsay and fellow promotions group member Fiona Winskill are developing a programme of events based around the cherry-stone spitting championship.
"There's going to be cherry-pie baking, cherry-pie eating, a kids' colouring competition, a cherry ping-pong ball race in the Mall stream - some kind person is going to paint the ping-pong balls red for us - and we'll have some other light entertainment to make it a real family day out," Mrs Lindsay said.
The contest will take place from 11am-3pm and follow the same format as in other years, where competitors pay $2 for three cherries and spit the stones on a 2m-wide "track".
Last year's winner, for the second successive year, was Mike Bassett-Allen, who lived in Wanaka, with a distance of 12.05m. Mr Bassett-Allen was "pushed for time" as he was shifting to Australia to live so stepped aside and second place-getter Sam Paarde-kooper, of Cromwell, competed in the Australian event in his place.
The 2009 Australasian winner, Craig McSharer, of Perth, achieved a distance of 11.44m. Paardekooper was third on 9.8m.
