As Karolina Urbanova broke the log of white pine she was standing on in half with her axe, she notched the 2nd world record for women’s speed lumberjack events she set that day.
The 11 inches of white pine was severed in 21.28 seconds, besting the previous time of 24.26.
Urbanova is one of a generation of women reaching elite levels in “timber sports,” which while being niche (to say the least) in the US, is virtually non-existent in her home country of Czechia.
“I’m still growing and still learning, but now the level of the girls is really high, so it’s also hard to keep the same rhythm with them because they now want to be better than me,” Urbanova, 24, told the BBC’s Sheila Flynn. “I just feel pretty proud of myself.”
The Lumberjack World Championships recently concluded in Hayward, Wisconsin, where Urbanova was among the 40 Lumberjills and 66 Lumberjacks who competed for woodchopping glory.
The record she set was for the “Underhand Chop” category, where the axe is swung at a log segment between the competitor’s legs.
Urbanova also broke the women’s record for the “Standing Block” category—the quintessential lumberjack event of felling a standing log segment in half, which she managed in just 19.38 seconds.
Growing up in a small village, she was talent scouted along with her mother and sister by someone looking to grow female participation in the sport in Europe, and soon the 3 women were practicing splitting logs with different axes in a barn.
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Her podium finishes at Hayward represented the end of a long road, but not nearly as long as the sport itself, and women’s participation in it besides, wrote Flynn in a delightful profile of timber sports for the BBC.
The Standing Block event was only added, Flynn wrote, in 2022, with women’s events limited almost entirely to logrolling, or that famous feat of seeing how long one can maintain their balance running on a log suspended in water.
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The championships in Hayward, now in their 66th year, is just one stage on a circuit of timber sport organizations worldwide. Once one overcomes the sense of novelty, the athletic demands become immediately clear—requiring fine balance for the logroll, dexterity in the speed trunk-climbing, and brute strength in the standing chop.
Though prize money is limited, and almost never enough to cover the expenses of a trip, traveling around the world to compete has been a highlight of Urbanova’s yet young life.
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