“Great tree feller and promoter of the sport”
The youngest son of the Deloraine Youd family of champion axemen, Bill Youd won his first chop as a 16-year-old in 1955. He was still competing with distinction as captain of the Australian veterans’ team before his retirement in 2000, only to reappear at 73 years of age in the XIV Australian Masters Games in 2012.
Bill is one of the greatest tree fellers in the sport’s history, winning 62 tree felling titles which include nine world titles and 19 Australian titles. At one event in Western Australia, Bill started from a handicap of 120 seconds!
He captained the Australian team six times, competing in Indonesia, New Zealand and the USA. Bill’s world record tree felling time of 1 minute 18 seconds set at the 1982 Royal Melbourne Show is still unbeaten forty years later.
Though never truly retiring from the sport, Bill has mentored young axemen including another Legend, Matthew Gurr. He says that woodchopping is like golf, “The legs supply the balance, the arms the steering, the body applies the power.”
Bill once beat Jack O’Toole in the hard hitting event in Melbourne. He recalled the Victorian champion’s words: “I don’t mind being beaten by big buggers, but it’s a bit rough when a little bloke like you knocks me off…”