Sporting Event Of The Week (32)

It was in 2019 BC (before Covid), sitting in a bar in the airport in Vancouver, BC (British Columbia) that I first became aware of timbersports. For some reason, the TV monitors were showing big, beefy men, mostly bearded, chopping and sawing their way through big blocks of wood as if their lives depended upon it. There seemed to be several categories where competitors were able to showcase a range of skills and while it had an oddly hypnotic and compelling effect, to the uninitiated it just seemed to be a load of chaps chopping wood. They were lumberjacks and definitely OK.

Timbersports, it appears, is a growing sport, branching out across the globe. Taking a leaf from other sports it is making a splash on social media. There is a British championship, held this year in June at the Royal Three Counties Showground in Malvern, featuring, for the first time, a women’s title.

Siblings, Glen and Zoe Penlington, won their respective titles, clearing their way to a place in the Stihl Timbersports World Championship which is held in the Partille Arena in Gothenburg on October 28th and 29th. Organisers expect more than 100 competitors from over 20 countries to compete for the title of team world champions while the elite twelve from the sport will battle it out for the title of individual world champion.

This is a sport that that is certainly creating a buzz.