Rookie Taranaki axeman cuts it fine to win world title

A young New Zealand axeman has gone from chopping wood on his Whangamōmona family farm, to be been crowned one of the world's best at timbersports.

23-year-old Matthew Gower took out the Timbersports Rookies Under 25 World Championship in Budapest, Hungary at the weekend, by the slenderest of margins.

“It was pretty close, it was five hundredths of a second or something," he told RNZ's Checkpoint.

Kiwis dominate the world competition in extreme timbersports

Checkpoint

Gower thought he had it in the bag and threw his arms in the air to celebrate, he says.

“I turned around and put my hands up and then seen the times and I thought, 'oh no, I've celebrated a bit early here', but the times got adjusted and it worked out for the best.”

Fellow Taranaki wood chopper Jack Jordan, set another world record at the event, winning his fourth consecutive Stihl Timbersports World Trophy.

The Kiwi team are close knit bunch, Gower says, who works on the family’s Whangamōmona farm.

“We are all pretty close, we spend just about every weekend together over the summer travelling around chopping at all the different A&P shows across New Zealand”.

He has a close team back home helping him get competition ready, he says.

“Dad's very helpful, so is Mum, they're awesome. Dad's always out there helping me get blocks and Mum's making sure I'm finishing early and cracking on me to get home and get some training done.”

His next move is quite a change of scene, he says.

“I go to Canada on the Yukon gold mining. I got a job up there through a friend of a friend of a friend.”

He’s never been mining before, he says.

“I've dreamed about going up there and doing gold mining ever since I started watching Gold Rush as a little kid.”