ESPN TIMBERSPORTS

The final standings for the 2009 STIHL TIMBERSPORTS Professional Series Championship shows a heated battle between two perennial favorites, New Zealanders Jason Wynyard and David Bolstad. One could easily overlook the name Melvin Lentz, all the way down the page in eighth place -- last in the finals pool and 18 points behind first-place Wynyard.

But Lentz's 2009 finish is only a blip on the radar screen of a career that has spanned more than a quarter of a century and includes more titles than any American lumberjack in history -- enough to earn him the nickname "King of the Lumberjacks."

When you take into account the two severely broken legs and a crushed ankle he has endured during his competitive life, a berth in the finals and a subsequent eighth-place finish at the age of 50 doesn't seem too bad.

Melvin "Mel" Lentz was born on May 30, 1959 into a family of lumberjacks in Creswell, Ore. His father, grandfather, two uncles and a brother all competed in the sport, but none achieved his level of success or fame. Lentz himself has no problem acknowledging his place in the family tradition.

"My dad was really good in the sawing and my grandfather wasn't too bad of a chopper," Lentz said matter-of-factly, "but I took it to that next level."

In 1970, at the age of 11, Lentz met the man who would guide his career. His father and mother were vacationing in Australia when they ran into Jim Alexander, a legendary figure in the country's fabled lumberjack tradition. They invited him to stay at their home in Oregon that summer, and Alexander accepted.

"When he came over, he started showing me how to chop and everything," Lentz said. "So he kept coming over summer after summer and I got older and bigger and all that and just kept improving. And then in 1979 he was here and he said 'Melvin you need to come to Australia.' So I thought about it and I thought, well shoot, that would be kind of fun."

Lentz arrived in Melbourne in September of that year for his first show and traveled for seven and a half months training and competing with Alexander before returning to the states. He credits that time as the most crucial in the development of his skills.

"Every professional sport has a coach," Lentz said. "When I was over there spending all those months, Jim (Alexander) was my coach, so instead of trying to learn stuff on my own … basically, out of all the American axmen, I'm probably the only one who's ever had one [a coach]."

From that point on, Lentz would travel approximately 11 months out of the year competing in lumberjack competitions all over the world. But it was in Australia where he would truly make his mark as an elite American competitor.

"Melvin is the first American to really dominate, and that is defined by going Down Under," said Dave Jewett, a fellow competitor. "Melvin is the only American ever to win the 15-inch underhand at the Sydney Royal Eastern show, and that's a huge deal -- that's the most coveted underhand in the world, and Melvin did win that.

"He was a powerful force in Australia, and if you're ever going to go somewhere to prove yourself as a competitive athlete, that's where you go."

Lentz began competing in the STIHL TIMBERSPORTS Professional Series at its inception in 1985, winning four world championships despite multiple injuries that threatened to do much more than sideline him -- the most serious of which almost ended in the amputation of his right leg.

Lentz was working in the forest when a three inch by four inch rectangular tube used in loading logs impaled him, directly through his femur bone. Lentz would lose four inches of the upper leg bone as a result.

"It's different if your bone's broke, it'll grow back together," said Lentz, pulling up his faded gray shorts to reveal a four-inch crater in his inner thigh. "But I lost four inches, so to get that bone to grow back was a pretty good job. Even though it's still hard for me in some events, I still seem to get close to them [his competitors], even though that's my power leg, my back and forth leg.

"It's affected me a lot, but I'm just lucky to be able to be here competing."

Only a year later, disaster struck Lentz again. This time when a tree landed on his other leg, breaking it, too.

"Everyone thought he was done," said Jewett, shaking his head. "People were like, that's it -- he's done. But he came back. I mean it was ridiculous. He shouldn't even be walking."

Lentz also missed the 2008 STIHL TIMBERSPORTS Professional Series after breaking an ankle -- a relatively small occurrence when one considers the magnitude of his other injuries. But it is his perseverance through the most dire of circumstances that has earned him the respect of his peers past and present.

"He's one of those guys who's been through everything, that when you're really getting your tail kicked in this sport and you want some advice to kind of pick yourself back up, you go talk to Melvin," said Jewett, who himself has battled back from a kidney transplant in recent years. "He really has seen everything, and I don't think there are any other competitors from his era that are even still competing."

Lentz said he believes he has only a few more years of serious competition left in his body, a thought which doesn't appear to affect him the way it does so many other top athletes (such as Brett Favre or Michael Jordan).

It helps that he is already grooming his successor to the King of the Lumberjacks throne -- his son Jason, 23. Jason has also received some coaching from Jim Alexander, who made the trek to America to teach the younger Lentz proper technique in his formative years.

"A lot of our problem is these guys that are coming in from college have never really been shown the right way right off the bat," Mel Lentz said. "And they accumulate bad habits and all that, and those are really hard to break. When you're young like that you can be showed the right way and that's what he did with me."

Currently, Lentz's son is in China performing lumberjack exhibitions, and hopes to join the STIHL TIMBERSPORTS Professional Series next year. The whispers around the lumberjack community are already growing; how good is he? Will he be able to fill his father's shoes? Can anyone?

"I don't know what his son's going to do -- he's huge -- and he's got potential when you think of the background and the genes and all that," said Mike Sullivan, himself a top American competitor on the STIHL TIMBERSPORTS Series for many years. "But does he have Melvin's drive? Because Melvin had incredible drive."

Other names tossed out to assume the role of top American competitor include Matt Cogar (nephew of current competitor Arden Cogar) and former collegiate champion Will Roberts, who narrowly missed a berth in the Finals this year. But it is here that Lentz draws the line.

"People said about Will Roberts 'Oh that's the next Mel Lentz,'" he said, his competitive fire briefly flashing. "But the problem is though, by the time I was his age I'd already won seven world titles, and he hasn't won any yet."

That fact is inarguable and almost certainly assures Lentz his place in STIHL TIMBERSPORTS history and his legend status among American lumberjacks.

"There's this question I heard asked once," said Sullivan, who spent his entire professional career chasing Lentz. "Who would you want in a trench at your back in the middle of a war? And I'd want Mel Lentz. I want him standing right behind me because he is one tough son of a bitch. He's been through some stuff that most guys probably would have never come back from. They'd have said to hell with it, I've had enough.

"He's a tough man -- he's mentally tough, he's physically tough, and that's what's made him a really great competitor."