Grit & Sawdust
The air is thick with sawdust, exhaust fumes and the deafening roar of an enormous chainsaw. How deafening? 125 decibels is one conservative estimate – not much less than a jetplane taking off. Champion lumberjack Elgan Pugh is on stage, wielding his custom-built cutting machine. Powered by a 250cc, 70hp go-kart engine, and armed with a 32-inch blade, it slices through an 18-inch-thick tree trunk in seconds.
Pugh is competing at the Telford International Centre in the Stihl Timbersports British Pro Championship, a professional event that sees the nation’s finest axe men chopping and chainsawing their way through various lumps of wood, testing their skills as well as their fitness and strength.
It’s a sport known generically as wood-chopping. Around the world, there are different competitions with different events and different sponsors. But it’s the German chainsaw manufacturer Stihl that stages arguably the world’s leading competition, the Stihl Timbersports Series, with competitions across Europe, North America and Australia, culminating in an annual World Championship.
