Burying the axe... from 20 paces
Modern sport is accessible for everyone says Wicklow’s phenomenal world champ
AXE throwing is for everyone, says the reigning world champion who spends her evenings slinging double-headed weapons in a Co. Wicklow barn with her friends.
Despite only practising the very modern sport for five years, Ceola McGowan triumphantly became the new world champion earlier this year.
Explaining her love of the pastime, the 31year-old tells the Irish Mail on Sunday: ‘The feeling of empowerment from picking up a gigantic double-head axe is phenomenal and it’s so accessible, anyone can do it.
‘Don’t count yourself out because you don’t think you’re capable.’
Ceola, who is from Co. Sligo, trains with her team, Wicklow Axe Throwers, in a barn
‘I can’t believe I’m doing this... but feeling power’
near Newtownmountkennedy, a short drive from her home.
She was introduced to the sport in 2018, when her intrigue was piqued after a friend told her they were off to ‘throw some axes in the forest’.
Ceola recalls: ‘I remember picking up a gigantic double-headed axe for the first time and thinking, “Oh my God, I can’t believe I’m about to do this” but feeling power. That was it, I never looked back.’
She says she quickly caught the ‘axe-throwing bug’ and now owns more than she can count, along with a collection of throwing knives for good measure.
Ceola also set up a home range with her boyfriend in the back garden, where she goes to blow off steam while working from home as an energy consultant.
‘It becomes meditative because once you’ve locked in the technique, it’s just about repeating and you can tune out,’ she says.
‘It’s just you, the axe and the target, everything else just melts away, there’s no feeling like it.’
After winning the World Double-Bit Axe Throwing Championships in Nova Scotia, Canada, Ceola says she’s ‘trying to settle back down to normality’, but admits: ‘The feeling keeps coming back up.’
She says: ‘People keep asking me, “How do you feel?” and their excitement almost sets me off again. I’m just going to keep riding the wave.’
In her home office, a dancing pole stands next to her championship trophy and Ceola attributes her strength in axe throwing to her other pastime – pole dancing.
She says she took up pole dancing in 2015 to improve her confidence.
‘If you can walk in and give pole dancing a try, you can do anything. Now I have my Axe Fam and my Pole Sisters,’ she laughs.
Axe throwing is stereotypically a male sport, and Ceola admits: ‘I love beating the men.’
She points out: ‘It’s such an accessible sport it’s not just about the strength it’s about technique so everyone is the same standard.’
Ceola underlined this in her stunning performance at the World
Championships in Canada this year when she finished just a single point behind the male world champion.
The new champ says all her teammates from the Wicklow Axe Throwers knew she was ‘in it to win it’, and a men’s team of three from the club joined her at the World Championships, coming in third place.
‘The boys did us proud,’ she says. The Double-Bit Axe Throwing
Championships in Nova Scotia spanned three days with a
‘If you can pole dance, you can do anything’
knockout round for the final six on the last day.
Ceola recalls the intense pressure
she was under: ‘You have only three throws to prove your worth. I mean the pressure was immense and it was in a sweaty sports hall with broken air conditioning.’
In the final round, she came face-to-face with the then-reigning world champion.
Recalling the dramatic showdown, Ceola says: ‘We got up to the line and we threw. She knew I had won and so did I, my knees were shaking and my whole body was buzzing with overwhelming energy. Then she just gave me this hug that pieced me back together.’
Competitors congratulated her on her win, but also laid down a challenge to the new champ.
‘People came up to me afterwards saying, “I studied your throw and I’m coming after you”, but in a halfjoking way,’ she says.
The next Double-Bit Axe Throwing
Championships are two years away, and Ceola says her title has created added pressure.
But, she insists, the achievement has not got to her head.
‘My friends keep dropping my win in conversation with strangers just for the pleasure of seeing my face turn red when they’re like, “You’re that girl!”’
She says her friends and family in Sligo gave her a royal welcome
home from Canada after she was crowned champ.
‘I was in the taxi home exhausted from all the stress of the competition, and I saw my face on a massive billboard coming into my village with “Congratulations Ceola World Champion” across the top,’ she says. ‘There was a party in the local pub with everyone telling me how proud they were of me, with flowers and a DJ.
‘It was brilliant to have your community pull behind you. It’s really unexpected.’ news@mailonsunday.ie