BY WGO STAFF
You’ve seen it on TV, now come experience it live. As part of Canada Day celebrations in Sydney’s Waterfront District, the top Professional Axe-Men in the country will gather for an event never seen before in Cape Breton that will have spectators at the edge of their seats from beginning to end. The STIHL Timbersports Champions Trophy is the “Master’s Cup” of the sport and is the most coveted event in the Canadian tour. This invitational event features the top twelve athletes from coast to coast – the ones who battled the hardest to the top of the Canadian ranking in 2018.
“We are looking forward to hosting the 2019 STIHL Timbersports Canadian Champions Trophy this Canada Day weekend,” says CBRM Mayor Cecil Clarke. “Cape Breton’s ocean gateway, the Port of Sydney, is bustling with ships, visitors and residents come summertime, which makes the Joan Harriss Cruise Pavilion the perfect location for this invitational event. It offers an excellent opportunity to showcase this exciting sport as well as our city.”
The STIHL Timbersports Series consists of six disciplines, three using an axe – Springboard, Standing Block Chop and Underhand Chop – and three using a saw – Stock Saw, Single Buck and Hot Saw. Most of the disciplines have evolved from traditional forestry techniques and have been practiced for over 150 years. The keys to victory in STIHL Timbersports are a combination of an outstanding fitness level, perfect technical skills with the axe and saw, and a complete focused and mentally strong condition to withstand the enormous pressure of this competition.
The Champions Trophy features four out of the six STIHL Timbersports disciplines in a back-to-back relay format without taking a break. Two athletes at a time will go head to head with the winner moving on to the next round and losing athlete being knocked out of the running. The competition starts with the Stock Saw discipline, in which the athlete must cut a disc of wood, a “cookie”, from a log with one downward cut, followed by the Underhand Chop, which simulates chopping a felled tree. Next is the Single Buck, a one-man crosscut saw about two metres in length. Finally, the Standing Block Chop, which goes back to felling a tree with an axe. The seamless transition from one discipline to another is what is going to set these athletes apart. Each heat requires supreme stamina, endurance and precision to push the athletes to their absolute limits.
“I am super excited to have the STIHL Timbersports series come to Cape Breton,” said George Williams, Cape Breton resident and one of the top professional athletes in the National circuit, who recently won a Bronze medal at the STIHL Timbersports World Championship with Team Canada in Liverpool, England last fall. “As the local athlete, I want to win in front of my people. It will be a hard task but I have been close in 2017 and 2018 so I am going to work very hard this year to accomplish this goal.”
“We are very happy to announce this event. Our team had the pleasure of visiting Sydney last fall during the bidding process and we fell in love with it. This will be a historic event for the STIHL Timbersports Series and Sydney, and we want to invite all residents to come out to the event. This event will be taped and aired on national television on TSN so come show the world how awesome Sydney and Cape Breton really is,” said Gerry Rozo, Manager and Executive Producer of STIHL Timbersports in Canada. “This is a free admission, all-ages event, brought to you by the Cape Breton Regional Municipality; a world-class extreme sport event coming to a world class city in Canada… can’t get any better than that”.
The time trial / qualifications will be held Sunday, June 30th with the Main Draw – STIHL Timbersports Champions Trophy competition following on Monday, July 1 at the Joan Harriss Cruise Pavilion. For more information about this exciting sport and upcoming competition visit stihl.ca.
