In celebration of the 160 th anniversary of the fire in Latvia, on thursday and friday, the Baltic States Championship in the fire sports “Strong firefighter” was held at Jelgava Tech High School stadium in Jelgava, at the end of which the strongest Latvian and Baltic firefighters rescuer of this year was established, as well as in the overall assessment of the winning state competition.
The strongest firefighter rescuer of 2025 in Latvia become Richard Yirgenson. He won this title for the second year in a row.
Lucca Leonavičius from The Fire and Rescue Service Department of the Ministry of the Interior of Lithuania became the strongest firefighter rescuer of the Baltic States.
Latvian firefighters also showed high-value results in a number of other competition disciplines.
In the overall national ranking, which took into account the best results of each country's representatives in each of the competition disciplines, Lithuania won, Estonia took second place, and the Latvian Fire and Rescue Service took third place.
The winners of matches were cleared in the individual, tandem and team offsets. They were started by firefighters from Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Poland and Germany. The competition is being implemented within the framework of the project of the cross-border cooperation programme between Latvia and Lithuania.
The competition “Strong firefighter” distance is built on a sport popular in Europe and the US that tests the professional skills and fitness of firefighters. The distance consists of five phases - climbing the tower carrying a hose bundle, winding a hose roll onto the top platform of the tower, testing strength by hitting the track with a hammer, pulling a hose full of water and delivering a nearly 90 kg dummy to the finish line. All distance is performed in the special protective clothing of a firefighter's rescuer, and in individual competitions participants breathe with the aid of a breathing apparatus. This mimics as closely as possible the conditions under which firefighters rescuers must work in a fire.
Competitions are organised within the framework of the project “Strengthening fire capacity in Klaipeda and Kurzeme regions for fire reduction” of the Latvian-Lithuanian cross-border Cooperation Programme in (FireLess, LL-00275). It runs from 1 March 2025 to 28 February 2027 (24 months) and a budget of EUR 329 335.92 (SRUGD budget share EUR 65 867.19, EU co-financing EUR 263 468.73).