Karolina Urbanova had never heard of lumberjack sports until a neighbor moved into her small Czech village and needed help at events. She was a teenager then. Now 24, she holds two world records.
At the Lumberjack World Championships in Hayward, Wisconsin — a competition the town has hosted since 1960 — Urbanova cut through 9 inches of white pine in 19.38 seconds to set a new mark in the Women’s Standing Block Chop. The previous record was 21.17. That is an 8.5% improvement, the kind of margin that in most timed sports would take a decade to chip away.
She wasn’t done. In the Women’s Underhand Chop, where competitors stand on a log and swing an axe between their own feet, Urbanova tore through 11 inches of white pine in 21.28 seconds. The old record was 24.26 — a 12.3% drop, which is not incremental. That is a breakthrough.
Meredith Ingbretson, a Hayward native who started logrolling at age three, set her own record in the Women’s Boom Run, sprinting back and forth across eight linked cedar logs in 13.78 seconds. The previous mark of 13.98 had stood as the target. Ingbretson said she spent the past year cutting out alcohol and anything else that “didn’t align” with the goal.
Forty women competed this year alongside 66 men. Three decades ago, according to event director Samantha LaSalle, female participation was roughly a third of what it is now. Women have competed at the world championships since the inaugural event in 1960, but for most of that history they were limited to logrolling. The Women’s Standing Block Chop — the event Urbanova just dominated — was only added in 2022.
“They were saying: ‘We can do more. We can do this event that the men have traditionally done,'” LaSalle said. “And as more of them practiced and got competitive in it, we said, you know what? There’s enough gals that can do this, and do this at a high level. Now we’re seeing those times drop each year — which just shows you how much better everyone is getting.”
The economics remain modest. Category winners at the Wisconsin championships received $1,000. Urbanova stayed with a host family during the competition. Ingbretson and her husband, who also competes, were hosted in Tasmania last winter, while her mother put up Canadian and Australian athletes in Hayward this year.
“You can go somewhere and they’ll let you stay and train you and work with you,” Ingbretson said. “It’s a very welcoming and open community.”
Urbanova was talent-spotted by a male competitor in her village. She, her mother, and her sister began training weekly in a barn, testing axes and techniques, picking up pointers at competitions across Europe. When she started, she says, there were “maybe like three girls doing this sport in Europe.”
“Telling people from the city that you are chopping wood usually every day, they looked weird at me,” she said. “It makes me different … so it is what it is.”
Ingbretson, who works as the community education director at Hayward’s high school and manages a local fitness center, said she was treated like a celebrity around town this week. She has her sights set on an all-round title — efficiency across multiple disciplines, which she calls “very difficult” and demanding of “a level of dedication and commitment to make it happen.”
Urbanova knows the field is closing the gap. “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,” she said. “I just feel pretty proud of myself.”
Sources:
- BBC News — “It makes me different”: Meet the women breaking world records in lumberjack sports
- Yahoo Sports — syndicated coverage of the same report