Stihl Timbersports will celebrate its 30th anniversary in New York City’s Central Park. Photo: Courtesy of Stihl Timbersports
If you notice a few more flannel shirts and beards parading around the streets of Manhattan this summer, that’s because the biggest lumberjacking competition in the world is coming to New York City for the first time ever: Stihl Timbersports is celebrating its 30th anniversary in Central Park on June 20, 2015.
Founded in 1985, the competition series pits professional competitive lumberjack athletes against each other in feats of strength and speed using axes and saws.
“It’s the original outdoor sport,” says Arden Cogar, Jr., who won the U.S. Championships in 2012 and has been runner-up the last two seasons. “The outdoors are not an indulgence, but a need for our human condition. We celebrate that in a way it was meant to be done: hard work by athletes who embody the spirit of what makes us American.”
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Now in its third decade, the televised Stihl Timbersports series is ESPN’s most prominent long-running show behind SportsCenter. To celebrate, the producers decided to bring the show to one of the biggest cities in the world as part of the annual Adventures NYC event.
“Big anniversary, big event, big athletes, big axes, big chainsaws,” begins Brad Sorgen, the executive producer for the series. “We need a big city: the Big Apple.”
Athletes will compete in six lumberjack disciplines: hot saw, single buck, springboard chop, standing block chop, stock saw, and underhand chop. (Confused? Don’t worry: We got the rundown on each discipline from Timbersports athlete Adrian Flygt.)
“The last time there was any timber industry was around [the time of] the American Revolution, when New York has just a fort colony,” says Matt Cogar, the event’s reigning two-time champion, who says this competition is a chance for the Timbersports athletes to show off the same skills used by loggers in the 1700s. “New York City, in my opinion, is not used to seeing the athleticism involved with Timbersports, so it’s exciting to showcase something that they don’t get to see in their everyday lives.”
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