I lied when they asked if I had ever used a chainsaw before. “A few times, but I think it’s been a while,” I said. This even seemed as if it might be true, until I got within arm’s reach of a purring 7.8 horsepower saw. Then I realised: I would have remembered.

Spike Milton, my trainer, runs me through the machine’s many safety features. “This one is, to my mind, the most important,” he says, pointing to a sticker indicating that goggles and ear defenders must be worn. That may be his favourite safety feature, but I prefer the brake that stops me accidentally sawing my head in half.

I’m already wearing goggles and ear defenders, along with chainmail leggings under Kevlar chaps, with the Mediterranean sun bearing down on my neck. I practise holding the saw, starting the saw, and then stopping the saw. Finally, I’m permitted to cut a disc – a cookie, they call it – from the end of a 40cm-diameter log. My cookie looks more like a cake slice: fat at the top, tapering to nothing at the bottom. British champion Simon Bond demonstrates the correct technique, cutting one, then coming up from underneath to cut another, in mere seconds. I don’t imagine there’s a page in the safety manual where it says, “Remember: always saw as fast as you can”, but that’s how they do things here.

The atmosphere is between a cage fight and a Formula One race: big men, loud music, screaming engines and exhaust fumes

Welcome to the world of competitive woodchopping, a sport with an atmosphere somewhere between a cage fight and a Formula One race: big men, loud music, screaming engines and exhaust fumes hanging in the air. And sawdust. Lots of sawdust.

This year’s Timbersports Champions Trophy is being held, somewhat incongruously, on the harbour front in Marseille, next to an always turning, ever empty Ferris wheel. Here, 12 national champions from 11 countries (there are two Italians) are about to take up axes and saws in a standalone competition, essentially a warm-up for the world championships in Liverpool in October. Although the British championships happen every summer in conjunction with the BBC’s Countryfile Live event, this will be the first time the world championships have come to the UK.

Cloned logs ready for chopping – 12 tonnes of wood is needed for the event. Photograph: Fabio De Paola/The Guardian

At sunset, a cheering crowd fills the stands; they’re mostly locals here to support Frenchman Pierre Puybaret, though there are also a few Czech flags being waved. It’s not clear how many of the audience of 800 or so are woodchopping aficionados – a lot seem to have bought tickets at the gate – but they’ve been amply supplied with French flags bearing the Timbersports logo.

Two presenters provide a steady stream of bilingual inanities between heats. Competitors emerge from a tunnel beneath bleachers in pairs, through a smoke machine cloud, accompanied by snatches of AC/DC, Guns N’ Roses and the White Stripes. Onstage, with the 17th-century tower of Fort Saint-Jean looming behind them, they start their chainsaws and place them on the ground, where they judder and twist out of position. Adopting a sort of racing crouch, the two men place their hands atop their logs, as if in prayer.

“Stand to your timber!” an announcer shouts. On the word go, contenders snatch up their saws. When the race is over a minute and a half later, crew members armed with leaf blowers clear the stage of sawdust. Cut logs are carted away and new ones installed.

A referee later tells me that the preparatory cry of, “Stand to your timber!” is new for this season; in previous years, the announcer shouted, “Hands on the wood!” If they were looking for something less unintentionally suggestive, they found something virtually meaningless: competitors never do anything that could be described as standing to their timber. But they’re stuck with it for now: the voice is a recording, synchronised with the official timer.

The umbrella term applied to the sport – a set of disciplines derived from timber industry work – varies. Woodchopping is the word they use in Australia and New Zealand, but it’s also referred to as lumberjack sports or logging sports. Timbersports (the name is a registered trademark of Stihl, the German chainsaw company that sponsors the series) is a streamlined offering from the traditional lumberjack skillset – no log-rolling here – with just six disciplines.

Canadian Stirling Hart wins the final. Photograph: Fabio De Paola/The Guardian

In fact, the Champions Trophy competition is really a single event. After dropping the chainsaw, competitors dash across the stage to chop through a 32cm-diameter log while standing on it. Then it’s back to the first log to saw through it again, this time by hand. Finally, they must chop horizontally through a standing block – a vertical log held in what looks like a big Christmas tree stand. The current world record for this one-man relay is 57 seconds.

Chopping up logs for sport may sound like a novelty, but it is not new. The first competitive woodchopping event was held in Latrobe, Tasmania, in 1891. It has a similar, parallel history in Canada and the US. The Lumberjack World Championships have been held in Wisconsin every year since 1960, and were televised in the US in the 1970s. Smaller competitions are long-established features of rural shows just about anywhere that has a history of logging.

“In Australia, if you really wanted to, you could compete every weekend,” says Mitch Argent, a member of the Australian national team, the Chopperoos. Timbersports’ promotional material stresses the athleticism of the contenders, but their physiques range from large and impressive to big and doughy. These days, most of the top competitors follow tailored fitness regimes to build strength and endurance, but not all. “I don’t think I’ve ever been to the gym in my life,” Argent says. “If you’re woodchopping, I think the best way to train for it is to chop wood.”

The first competitive woodchopping event was held in Latrobe, Tasmania, in 1891

The age range also varies considerably. Argent and Bond are both in their mid-20s, but routinely compete against men twice their age. The best, however, seem to have two things in common: a generational connection to the sport, and easy access to wood. Bond, the British champion from north Wales, currently works on a logging gang in New Zealand. Argent’s father, a former competitor, still supplies all the chopping blocks for Queensland shows.

Most choppers have specialist events, but to win the Champions Trophy, you’ve got to be good at everything. Of the four core disciplines that comprise the race, the single buck saw, sometimes known as the “misery whip”, is reckoned to be the hardest to master. “It’s the most technically difficult,” Bond says, “because there’s so much that can go wrong with it.”

The single buck looks like a 6ft two-man saw with one of the handles removed. The blade weighs more than a stone, with long teeth designed to cut deep in both directions. A combination of strength and technique is required to operate one, which is possibly why I can’t. No matter how hard I pull – or push – the saw will not move.

The competitors line up in the harbour. Photograph: Fabio De Paola/The Guardian

“Find the balance,” Milton tells me. A former competitor and now Timbersports’ global director of sport, Milton has a manner somewhere between a scoutmaster and a driving instructor, displaying a patience that I fail to emulate. The trick, he explains, is to find the exact angle that allows the blade to draw. As I pull, he reaches out and adjusts the height of the handle. Suddenly, the blade moves. As soon as he lets go, it stops.

After several aborted attempts, I begin to grasp the principle, if not the skill. It’s exhausting and frustrating work. To make things worse, I’m being watched by a knot of French schoolchildren on a trip to the museum next door. Milton will not give up on me, although I very much wish he would. “You can do it,” he says. He repeats this every time the blade jams, forward and back, until it becomes incantatory. Halfway through the log, I realise he means to make me complete the cut. I’m out of breath, lightheaded and dripping with sweat. My arms feel like empty sleeves. I push the saw. It buckles and pushes back.

The single buck looks like a 6ft two-man saw with one handle removed. No matter how hard I pull or push it will not move

“You can do it,” Milton says. Eventually, after about a quarter of an hour, the cookie drops to the floor. The current record is 9.39 seconds.

Milton won’t let me try either of the axe events, and for that I am grateful. The axes, they say, are sharp enough to shave with. The underhand chop, in particular, looks an easy way to lose a foot.

Competitors tend to play down the obvious risks. “Accidents happen in every sport,” Bond says. “But if you’re one of these top 12 guys that are here now, they’re all so proficient at it, you don’t think about the danger.”

“I think I’ve seen one person cut himself ever,” Argent says.

Stirling Hart, the 29-year-old Canadian champion, has a scar running from the outer corner of his right eye down to his lower lip, from an injury he received at an event in Australia in 2011. “I must have hit an artery right here,” he says, pointing to his cheek. “It was like the knight’s arm in Monty Python And The Holy Grail.”

The event was the springboard, in which competitors axe a notch in a pole, jam a plank into the notch, climb on to it, and cut another, higher notch. It ends when you’ve cut through a block fixed to the top of the pole while standing on the second board. Hart holds the world record for this event (35.67 seconds), but back in 2011 the axe fell from where he’d stuck it and the blade grazed him on the way down. “I figured it was the back of the axe that hit me, so I just kind of gave my head a shake,” he says. “Then I could see blood all over my hands. I thought, ‘That’s not ideal.’”

Simon Bond of Great Britain taking part in the standing block chop. Photograph: Fabio De Paola/The Guardian

The scar has since become something of a trademark. “I get recognised everywhere I go,” he says, “which can be a good thing or a bad thing. But yeah, the sport is dangerous.”

***

Woodchopping originated when lumberjacks turned their day job into a weekend hobby, but it remains very difficult for today’s competitors to turn their hobby into a job. The equipment, specially designed for competition, is expensive: a “racing” axe will set you back £400, and most choppers own dozens in different weights. A single buck saw costs about £1,700. A hot saw – a custom-built, high-tuned chainsaw with 10 times the horsepower of a standard model – sells for up to £8,000. Prize money and sponsorship can offset the investment, but nobody’s in it to get rich.

Backstage in Marseille, in the hours before showtime, competitors mark up the logs they’ve been allotted in a draw, scrutinising the rings on the cut face. To be successful in this sport requires more than strong arms and a sharp axe; you have to know a lot about wood. I ask the American qualifier, Arden Cogar, if the European timber presents any particular challenges for him.

A single buck saw costs £1,700. A hot saw – a custom-built chainsaw – up to £8,000. Nobody’s in ​it to get rich

“It’s very abrasive on the equipment,” he says. “The poplar, actually it’s a cottonwood species, and it sucks silica up into the phloem, which is the heart of the tree. And that silica is sand, and that causes the razor edge on the axe to be just frayed.” I don’t know what I thought he was going to say, but I didn’t expect his answer to have the word phloem in it.

A malpractice litigation attorney from West Virginia with an impressive gut, a bald head and a goatee beard, Cogar belongs to what the New Yorker once described as the first family of competitive lumberjacking. “My father, five paternal uncles and about 20 members of my family competed in the sport,” he says. His cousin, Matthew, has won the US Timbersports championship five times since he took the title from Arden in 2013.

The Cogars host their own annual competition, the Webster County Woodchopping festival, started by Cogar’s father in 1960, which he now runs and which he is missing, for the first time in his life, in order to compete in Marseille. Cogar also has the distinction of being, at 48, the oldest of the 12 finalists (the youngest is 21). When he finished first in his time trial heat, he shouted, “Power to the old fat people!” He is hoping his long-honed technique will compensate for his extra years. “I do not have to think about it,” he says. “The only time in my life that I am thoughtless is when I have an axe in my hands.”

Woodchopping originated when lumberjacks turned their day job into a weekend hobby. Photograph: Fabio De Paola/The Guardian

The amount of wood required for competition is of another order: 12 tonnes just for this weekend – competition blocks for every heat of every event, plus spares and testing logs. The trees are industrial hybrids, with trunks that grow an inch a year in diameter. If the soft wood isn’t much good for anything beyond pallets, paper pulp or biomass, it’s perfect for competition: because all the trees are clones, there is little variation between them. Even the knots appear in the same places on different trunks, providing a level playing field for chopping. It may seem a huge waste of wood, but the remnants are processed as chipboard or biomass. The industrial timber still goes to industry; it just stops here along the way to get punished.

As the sun sinks towards the water, the competition on the harbourside heats up. Hart makes short work of local boy Puybaret in the quarter-finals, calmly checking his axe blade while the other man is still chopping. At this stage, advancement takes its toll: finalists will have to repeat the relay a minimum of four times on the night. Only Hart, looking calm and far fitter than anyone else, seems untroubled. The men with the leaf blowers come out. Sawdust catches in the back of my throat.

Cogar and New Zealander Jason Wynyard, the two oldest men in the competition, are destined to face each other in the quarter-finals. Cogar wears a stars-and-stripes beanie for the occasion. He finished well in the time trials, which means he’s had one fewer round to endure, but both men look exhausted.

Arden Cogar, at 48, is the oldest of the finalists. Photograph: Fabio De Paola/The Guardian

“Let’s go, Dad! You got this!” one of Cogar’s daughters shouts from the stands as he warms up his saw.

“Stand to your timber!” the announcer shouts.

I laugh, even after all this time.

The two men are neck-and-neck until the underhand chop, when Cogar gets his axe stuck in the block and loses vital time getting it out. He almost regains it on the single buck, by all accounts Wynyard’s specialty. But his strength is fading by the time he reaches the standing chop, and he swears as he sees Wynyard finish ahead of him. Wynyard will go on to lose to Hart in the final. When Hart hoists the champion’s trophy over his head, the other contenders hose him down with jeroboams of champagne.

Immediately after his defeat Cogar is interviewed by one of the French presenters. She asks where it all went wrong.

“Je ne suis pas jeune,” he says. “Et je suis gros.”

“And you speak French very well!” she says.

“No,” he says. “I do not.”

Tim Dowling attempts to challenge the professionals. Photograph: Fabio De Paola/The Guardian

Do not try this at home: the standing block chop

This discipline simulates the felling of a tree. Athletes cut a vertical, 30cm-diameter log in half as quickly as possible. The world record is 12.33 seconds, set by Jason Wynyard at the 2007 Individual World Championships.

The preparation Mark the block with chalk to help you aim when swinging the axe.

The stance Stand an axe’s length away from the log, side on. Keep your legs hip-width apart for stability, your front foot in line with the centre of the log.

The swinging motion As you swing, push off your back leg and rotate your hip, putting all your weight on to the axe, as you would when driving a golf ball.

The technique Cut with the heel (bottom) of the axe, making sure you hold it at a 45-degree angle and alternate between two upward cuts and two downward cuts.

The changeover Cut approximately halfway through the log, then switch to the other side to cut through the remaining half of wood and complete the full chop.

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