On Thursday and Friday starting at 10:00 AM, the Latvian Firefighting Sport Championship "Toughest Firefighter" will take place at the Liepāja Daugava Reserve Stadium (Jūrmalas Street 3), concluding with the determination of this year's strongest Latvian firefighter-rescuer and strongest team. The winners will be decided across individual, tandem, and team categories. Firefighter-rescuers from Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia will compete. The competition is implemented within the framework of the Latvia–Lithuania Cross-Border Cooperation Programme project.
"In the profession of a firefighter-rescuer, physical fitness is an essential part of daily work — often it is strength, endurance, speed, and the ability to maintain focus that determine how successfully we can help people in distress. The 'Toughest Firefighter' competition allows these skills to be tested in a particularly dynamic and exciting way. I believe it will be very interesting for spectators to watch this competition in person. We are delighted to welcome the competitors to Liepāja this year, gathering firefighter-rescuers from across all Baltic states. Such events not only promote professional skills and mutual exchange of experience, but also give residents an opportunity to get to know the work of firefighter-rescuers up close, view the service equipment, and learn more about safety," says Colonel Vilnis Bents, Chief of the Kurzeme Region Directorate of the State Fire and Rescue Service.
The opening ceremony will take place on Thursday at 10:00 AM with speeches by Mārtiņš Baltmanis, Chief of the State Fire and Rescue Service, Gunārs Ansiņš, Mayor of the State City of Liepāja, and Aivis Tints, Head of the Liepāja Sports Department. The first start will be given around 10:40 AM.
The course for the "Toughest Firefighter" competition is based on a sport popular across Europe and the USA that tests the professional skills and physical fitness of firefighter-rescuers. The course consists of five stages: climbing a tower while carrying a hose bundle, hoisting a hose roll up to the top platform of the tower, a test of strength by hitting a rail with a sledgehammer, dragging a water-filled hose, and carrying a dummy weighing nearly 90 kg to the finish line. The entire course is completed in full protective firefighting gear, and in the individual events, participants breathe using breathing apparatuses. This simulates as closely as possible the conditions under which firefighter-rescuers must work during a fire.
The competition is organized within the framework of the Interreg VI-A Latvia–Lithuania Programme 2021–2027 project "Strengthening Firefighting Capacity in Klaipėda and Kurzeme Regions to Reduce Fires" (FireLess, LL-00275). The project implementation period is from March 1, 2025, to February 28, 2027 (24 months), with a total budget of EUR 329,336 (SFRS budget share EUR 65,867, EU co-financing EUR 263,469).
We invite spectators to watch the competition in person — admission is free!
