CANADIANS ON THE CUTTING EDGE
Enter the world of competitive timber sports — a passion for athletes with sawdust in their veins
Growing up in Maple Ridge, B.C., with a father and grandfather who thought chopping wood and climbing trees against the clock was fun, meant that getting an axe was no different than a pair of hockey skates or a football.
Stirling Hart got his first axe when he was 4 years old. He doesn’t remember exactly what he did with it, but he’s got the pictures to prove it’s not just a tall family tale. What he can do now with an axe — and a chainsaw and six-foot-long saw blade, for that matter — is pretty impressive.
Hart is the overall Canadian champion and world record-holder in one of the six men’s events in Stihl Timbersports, a touring series with national and international stops.
The 27-year-old is also a natural showman who knows that getting attention for a sport as niche as this one, especially in urban centres where logging isn’t front of mind, takes a little personality.
So, at a demonstration event in To- ronto this past week, standing on the block of wood that he was about to chop into pieces by repeatedly swinging an axe between his own feet, Hart started cracking jokes.
The axe, which costs $800 and is sharp enough to shave with (as he demonstrated with the hair on his foreman), is “awesome” and would be damaged if it hit the metal mesh guards that he wears to provide some protection for his feet and ankles.
“That’s my main motivation for not hitting my feet,” he said with a grin, just before he swung the axe from high above his head into the block of wood under his feet and sent wood chips the size of coffee cups flying in the air.
His father and grandfather were hobby competitors, but Hart has taken it a step further to make chopping wood a full-time job with training, competition and teaching.
That’s not the case for everyone, including Canada’s female champion, Caitlin Carroll.
“It’s a really expensive hobby. For most competitors, if you can pay your expenses for a weekend of com- peting you’re doing well,” said the 25-year-old who lives in Truro, N.S., and works as a veterinary technician to pay the bills.
A single buck — that’s a saw that’s longer than competitors are tall — costs $2,000.
“And most people have more than one. You need one for training and one for competition,” she said.
Carroll played hockey, soccer and baseball before discovering timber sports at agricultural college and she was hooked.
Men have been swinging axes competitively in Canada since the 1800s, when rival logging camps battled for bragging rights, and for the last three decades as part of the Stihl Timbersports series. But women have only been competing on that tour for three years. It still surprises people.
“When people ask about the sport, they really do almost take a step back,” she said. “Wait, you have axes? You have chainsaws?”
Carroll wielded a chainsaw — deafeningly loud inside the Toronto gym where the sponsor held the demonstration event — to slice a wedge of wood off a log with finesse, similar to someone expertly carving a turkey.
There’s a substantial physical component to timber sports and a fair bit of brute strength is required. As with most sports, though, precision and technique separate the very best athletes from the rest.
Hart uses technique and a few head games to gain an edge on his competitors, who sometimes have a size advantage on him.
“I feel a huge part of my success is from my mental aspect, my mental approach to sport,” Hart said. “When I get on stage I’m so calm. I don’t get nervous anymore, and I know a lot of younger guys do. And if they’re threatening to take away my title, I’m probably going to try to mess with their head a little bit.”
What constitutes a mental game between men wielding axes and chainsaws, exactly?
“When we go up and look at the wood, I know the wood is soft but I might say: ‘This is really hard wood. I’ll probably have to put a few extra hits in it.’ Or if they’re testing an axe in the log, I’ll go up and say: ‘Oh, you’re going to use that one? Well, that’ll probably work.’ Just placing that little bit of doubt in their mind might be the edge I need. Anything I need to win.”
It was his own axe that beat him six years ago, and he has a dramatic scar running the length of his right cheek as a reminder. He was in Australia competing in the springboard event, where competitors make their way up a tree trunk by chopping notches and slotting in boards to hold their weight. The axe, too loose while he was putting in a board, fell out and cut his face.
“When I got the scar I wasn’t very good at springboard, obviously, and last November I got the world record. That was kind of motivating: having the scar, but not letting the event beat me,” Hart said.
He knew the cut would be a bad one. The doctor who bandaged it up wouldn’t let him see it for three days.
“He thought it would traumatize me,” he said. Did it? “Apparently not. I’m doing okay still,” he said, smiling.
His mom, however, was a different matter.
“I didn’t tell her for three weeks. She was not impressed.”