From 2nd to 5th August the world's elite of loggers met in Lillehammer, Norway, to crown their champion at the 33rd World Championships.
New world champion is Marco Trabert from Germany. He took overall victory over all five disciplines. In the U24 ranking, Thomas Schneider, also from Germany, won the competition. Both athletes competed with the brand new STIHLWorld Loggers' Championship MS 500i, the world's first chainsaw with electronic fuel injection. The competition version was specially designed to meet the requirements of the athletes.
In the team competition the athletes Shkudrou, Durovich and Zaremba from Belarus succeeded in bringing home victory. All in all, the athletes who competed with STIHL chainsaws were extremely successful: they won 33 of the 57 medals to be awarded.
More than 120 participants from 27 nations competed for the coveted precious metal in the five disciplines of targeted felling, fitting another chain, bucking by combined cut, precision bucking and limbing in front of over 1,000 enthusiastic spectators in the Håkons Hall in Lillehammer. The World Loggers’ Championships - internationally known as the World Logging Championships (WLC) - have been held every two years since the 1970s. The disciplines are based on the traditional tasks of harvesting wood in the forest, focusing on the skill in handling the chainsaw. Safety, precision and speed in performing the disciplines are evaluated. Strong nerves are essential, as often only millimetres are decisive for victory or defeat in the competitions.
Marco Trabert, already Team World Champion in 2014 and third at the 2016 World Championships, made his victory particularly exciting. He won the gold medal in this single discipline in the last run, the limbing, in a heartbeat final with only 3 points ahead of second-placed Ole Harald Løvenskiold Kveseth from Norway. With this outstanding performance, he also won the World Championships title in the overall ranking. The same phenomenon could be noted with the U24 ranking: the new World Champion Thomas Schneider from Germany and the runner-up Daniel Oberrauner from Austria were separated by only two points.
In the team competition, Siarhei Shkudrou, Viktar Zaremba and Valery Durovich (overall World Champions 2016), who competed with the STIHL MS 500i (amongst other chainsaws), left the competitors at a distance due to consistently good rankings in all five disciplines. Thus, the team from Belarus successfully defended its 2016 World Championship title. The team from Germany secured second place, followed by the team from Austria.
A total of 57 medals were awarded at these World Championships, 19 gold, silver and bronze medals each in the U24, women's and active categories.
13 gold, 11 silver and 9 bronze medals were awarded to sportsmen and sportswomen equipped with STIHL chainsaws. For this reason, they were able to take home 33 of a total of 57 medals.
