Prior to the World Logging Championship, Husqvarna is hosting three training camps for all participants using Husqvarna products in the competition. The first one was held in Austria and now the second training camp has been completed. Loggers from nine national teams gathered in Luua, Estonia to get expert guidance, sharpen their discipline skills and brace each other to improvement before the actual competition in Croatia in September.

One of the participants was the Swedish living WLC legend Lars Strandell, who gave the Husqvarna Loggers Blog a good report over the outcome of the training camp. Here are his findings:

The Husqvarna training camp in Estonia was held at the forestry college in the town of Luua. This is located in the southeast part of the country and the site turned out to be a perfect place to host the training.

The first day started out with theoretic lectures on the program and the rules of WLC 2010. On the afternoon, the training of the five disciplines started. Everyone got a chance to concentrate a little bit more on the discipline they felt needed the most practice. It was a joyful and optimistic mood in the group and everyone was really supportive to each other.

The two favorites form the Estonian team, Andes Olesk and Taavi Ehrpais, were each given a new chainsaw, to replace their 13-year-old Husqvarna products. This became quite an emotional moment; it is not easy for a logger to be separated from this kind of a long time friend. Though, after trying out their new products they both could happily establish that they got a better discipline score right away.

The practice continued on the second day and on the third day it was time for an internal competition. Everyone wanted to boost their confidence with a good result and it was a focused group of loggers lining up for the first discipline: Tree felling.

It was a rainy and windy day, the competition almost had to be cancelled. The weather improved enough to start the tree felling, but the bad condition had its impact on the results. Many participants were disappointed from felling their trees a bit too far from the target stick. The best result was performed by the Lithuanian logger Povilias Penkaitis, who scored 655 points.

The “Fitting another chain” discipline was also affected by the cold weather and the really fast results were notably absent. Some participants though managed to get pretty good scores. Ilya Shetsov, Alexander Mallat and Vladimir Dashugin from the Russian team as well as Jukka Permäki from Finland came out as winners. Perimäki, together with his national teammate Esa Tumelius, also performed best in the “Bucking with combined cuts” discipline. The precision bucking discipline was won by the Lithuanian participant Gediminas Stasiunas.

The limbing discipline came to be a really exciting final. Many loggers had the chance to take the total winning score of the training camp. Alexander Mallat from Russia had the best discipline score, while the winner of the total score was Romas Balciunas from Lithuania. Second place came Ilya Shvetsov from Russia and third came Jarmo Laatikainen from Finland. These three loggers and their national teams will definitely be among the favorites for the gold medal in Croatia.

Two joyful reflections from the Estonian training camp:

• The junior participant Gediminas Stasiunas from Lithuania not only won the precision bucking, he also ended up number four in the total score. No doubt this young logger will be a future top contestant in the WLC and it will be fun to follow his results this year.

• The Estonian team was joined by a female participant, giving all the other boys a real challenge. In the Estonian training camp, Kreedera Arula performed very well and Husqvarna is happy that the male dominance of the sport is being challenged. All the good luck to you in the future, Kreedera!