AT 125 DECIBELS, JASON WYNYARD’S CHAINSAW IS LOUDER THAN A JET PLANE DURING TAKEOFF.
But with earplugs firmly inserted, the 5500 spectators watching him on stage in Stuttgart’s Porsche Arena are unperturbed by the noise. Instead, their attention is fixed firmly on the demonstrable power of Wynyard’s 4ft-long, 30kg, mechanical bludgeon, as its teeth accelerate from 0-190mph in less than a second, making short work of a 46cm-thick tree trunk.
This is hot-saw racing, an event that has been described as “a combination of a combustible rock’n’roll show and drag racing”. A thin Plexiglas screen is all that separates Wynyard and his souped-up tool from the audience. It is a seemingly meagre but nonetheless necessary precaution; should the chain snap while operating at this speed, fragments of it would fly like bullets.
Hot-saw racing is the grand finale of the 2016 Stihl Timbersports World Championship. It is a weekend packed with sweat-soaked and testosteronespiked events, all performed at deafening volume, in which competitors from 22 nations chop, hack and surgically scythe their way through a small forest’s worth of timber. By doing so, each hopes to carve out a slice of the not insignificant €70,000 purse in the process.
Rewarding a combination of power and precision, ‘wood chopping’ – as the sport is known among enthusiasts – requires total-body strength as competitors wield axes and saws with incredible efficiency across six individual and team events. These include: the stock saw (chainsawing two slices from a horizontally mounted, 40cm diameter log); the single buck (cutting a slice of wood off a 46cm horizontal tree trunk with a manual cross-cut saw); and the illustrious hot-saw (racing to slice off three complete ‘cookies’).
The lumberjack lifestyle – featuring long stints in the wild, some serious heavy lifting and an intimate familiarity with weapons of Viking proportions – is ripe for competition. First developed as a way to showcase talent to potential employers on the Australian island of Tasmania, wood chopping has since grown into an unusual sporting phenomenon. Traditionally, lumberjacks would compete at country fairs – now it has gone global. And while Australia and New Zealand dominate, it’s gaining popularity in parts of North America, where ‘ Woodsman’ – a grass roots version of the discipline – is now an intercollegiate sport.
AXES TO GRIND
For many competitors, such as New Zealand team member Wynyard, wood chopping has been an integral part of their upbringing. In Wynyard’s case, his father and his grandfather were full-time loggers, felling native kauri and rimu trees on the country’s North Island. Wynyard has been involved in lumberjack sports since before pre-adolescence. Now, a multiple Timbersports champion aged 43, standing at 6ft 4in tall, and weighing in at 140kg, he looks built to dismember tree trunks with startling alacrity.
Backstage, amid the smell of sawdust, deep heat and chainsaw exhaust fumes, the competitors simulate their axe strokes and saw movements. Watching them perform empty-handed, their movements are curiously balletic. Most are built like rugby players. All wear football-style jerseys emblazoned with national colours or sponsors’ logos. Here and there teams huddle together, talking tactics, but most competitors sit alone, sharpening their huge axeheads against whetstones, like warriors preparing to do battle.
Six years ago, at a competition in Australia, Canadian lumberjack Stirling Hart found himself on the wrong end of such an axe, as the scar unwinding from the corner of his eye to his mouth testifies. Hart had been competing in a discipline known as ‘the springboard’ which involves climbing a vertical tree trunk, using flexible platforms wedged into notches, before finally lopping off the top of the trunk. Halfway up, lumberjacks suspend their axes by sticking them into the wood. Stirling’s axe came unstuck, with him clinging to the trunk below.
“I saw the axe fall and there was nothing I could do to get out of the way,” Hart recounts with the measured nonchalance of a man who knows that, had the axe been an inch to the left, he would not be here to tell this story. He shrugs. “Lots of blood and 88 stitches later, here we are. Some of us are the best in the world at what we do, but as in any sport, even the pros can have accidents.”
Surprisingly, wood chopping remains
“I saw the axe fall and there was nothing I could do”
unregulated by any single governing body. But, like Wynyard, the majority of the competitors have grown up around axes. For many, says Hart, the smell of wood smoke is in their blood.
Now 27, Hart was raised in various log cabins in British Columbia, and has been wielding an axe since the age of three. “A big part of growing up was chopping wood,” he says. “I know which kinds of wood burn better; which kinds build houses well. I know the tree surgery business. Anything to do with wood.”
SPLINTER GROUPS
The passion may be there, but the sport is not yet established enough for most of the lumber sportsmen to give up their day jobs. In fact, 30-year- old Ohio native and USA team member Matt Cogar is the only person who can be said to be a true professional, having recently abandoned his job as a salesman to embrace the call of the wild. Cogar, his wife and his daughter now live on the small amount of prize money he earns from competitions. This financial pressure, he says, incentivises him. “When you’re a professional wood chopper, the difference is you have to win. If you don’t win, your family won’t eat.”
Cogar spends around 10 hours a week honing his skills, and the same amount of time in the gym. His training is geared toward building strength through endurance. As such, he’ll focus on highrep, heavy-load Crossfit-style exercises. Kettlebell swings play an essential part in both simulating his axe swing and strengthening his core, with a relentless routine of pull-ups and press-ups rounding out his chest, back and shoulders. Naturally, rotational moves such as Russian twists and cable chops are essential for the power needed to wield the potentially lethal instruments of his sport. Like strongmen, a competitive woodchopper supplements his training by eating as much, and as often, as he can.
The top German lumberjack, Dirk Braun, also spends much of his free time training. After winning the German championships for the eighth time last year, Braun invested €4500 in building a wooden stage in his back garden,
complete with all the log stands required to practise the various disciplines at home. A former competitive bodybuilder, Braun has also constructed a gym in his basement. With wood chopping events taking place throughout the year, it is vital he maintains his conditioning all year round, although four damaged discs in his back – the combined result of overtraining and the physical demands of working as a lumberjack – have limited what he is able to do. “When I was a bodybuilder it was easier to train,” he says. “Now my body is often in a lot more pain, making it harder to focus on my workouts. I compensate by doing higher reps with lighter weights.”
THE CHAIN GANG
Closer to home, a different problem plagues the UK team. Captain Taff Evans and his teammates mostly hail from local Welsh clubs (Gwynedd, Denbighshire and Powys, as well as Worcestershire) but attracting new recruits is difficult because of the national dominance of rugby. Many of the skills are transferable, but only one sport requires intricate knowledge of a chainsaw motor as well. Spike Milton is the British team coach. “I’m looking for team players with great hand-eye coordination, power, speed, fast-twitch muscle groups, rhythm, core strength and mental strength,” he says. “And they need a bit of arrogance. They’ve got to have that killer instinct. Plus, they have to know how to look after their chainsaws.”
Back on the stage in Stuttgart, Wynyard’s own chainsaw is at full throttle, spraying clouds of sawdust into the air as he attacks the logs presented to him for dissection. The throb of the engine makes the air hum as discarded offcuts jump and dance under the vibrations.
To claim the world championship title for his own, Wynyard must place highly in each of the weekend’s individual disciplines, with points from each accumulating in a similar way to the decathlon event in athletics. In the underhand chop (an axe discipline) and the single buck (cutting with a crosscut saw) he scores maximum points. He also fares well in the others, placing third in the standing block chop and fifth in the stock saw. But in the ‘hot saw’ he has Cogar, Hart and a notoriously talented Czech competitor named Martin Komarek with whom to contend.
As the shuddering rattle of Wynyard’s customised chainsaw dies down at the end of this final event, the arena is plunged into silence as the judges reveal the overall scores. Amassing 12 points in the hot saw, and 72 points overall, Wynyard has succeeded in claiming ultimate victory, beating his nearest competitor, Cogar, by nine points. Hart, for his part, places fourth, with 59 points.
As trophies are handed out and brandished overhead by the victorious competitors, Wynyard appears to be so spent that he very nearly drops his off the front of the stage. The huge arms that have spent all weekend swinging biting axes into resilient tree trunks are finally starting to tire. Wynyard’s title has been hard won but – should he wish to make a living out of this growing sport – there will always be another tree to fell, each springing up almost as quickly as he can cut them down. Watching from side stage, it’s clear that, exhausted though they are, this battle between man and nature is exactly what these lumberjacks live for. With thanks to Stihl GB, stihl.co.uk
“The smell of woodsmoke is in their blood”