Tops in the world

He's the best firefighter in the world.

Dwayne Drover, originally from Lourdes, recently won the World Firefighter Combat Challenge's individual competition in Las Vegas, Nevada.

Mr. Drover is a 34-year-old firefighter with the City of Waterloo Fire Department in Ontario. Standing at 6'2" and weighing 245 lbs, he's been training for competitions over the past few years.

"I like to push myself regardless of anything I do," he said last week in an interview with the Georgian. "Once I get something in my head, I just have to go until I master it."

His initial chance to compete came in 2005.

"The first day we went to train, it was kind of hard because I was trying something new, but I thought, 'yeah, I think I can do this,'" he said of the Ontario-based competition.

"And I was doing pretty good, until I got to the last part of it, and it absolutely killed me. I almost threw up in my mask. I was in pretty good shape at that time, but not in this case.'"

He finished that race with a time of 1:51. By his second competition, he had improved his personal best by 11 seconds.

"Some guys were saying, in a few years I'd be down in the sub-90s, less than a minute and a half. And that kind of fuelled my fire, and I trained all that year and I finished off the year ... with 20 seconds off my personal best."

In addition to the physical training, Mr. Drover also studied tapes of other competitor's runs, in both Canadian and American races.

"I can run a 1:18 on our course now; on the American course there are a few more physically demanding obstacle courses. It's a strong mans' course, I call it."

Mr. Drover entered his first world championships in Deerfield Beach, Florida, and placed 30th.

Encourages by his personal achievements, he and some of his firefighting colleagues continued with various races on both sides of the border.

"If it's in a five or six hour drive, we'll travel," he said.

Reaching the top

In October of this year, Mr. Drover competed in and won a competition in Evansville, Indiana. He and fellow firefighter Canadian Shaun Henderson also won the tandem race at the same event.

"Then we decided to go Texas for the US nationals," he said. "So we flew down to Texas and I won. I never had any intentions of going down and winning, because there's a lot of top dogs down there."

Then came the World Firefighter Combat Challenge in Las Vegas. For the competition, firefighters wear full gear and breathing apparatus, and perform a series of five tasks - including climbing the five-story tower, hoisting, chopping, dragging hoses and rescuing a life-sized dummy.

"The Worlds is a five-day event. There's three qualifying days, you can run one or three. So, I chose to run three because I like to run the course a lot."

He said a lot of Americans and some Canadians competitors expressed concern that he was running too much and he would tire himself out before the finals.

"I said to them, 'I train for five or six hours a day, so a minute and a half is not going to kill me.'"

On the first day, he finished the race with a personal best of 1:28. The second day, he again beat his best with a time of 1:26. On the third day, he finished with a time of 1:29.

"Because my [third] time was higher than my first two qualifiers ... there was a lot of talking behind my back, and people were telling me that I was tired. I said, 'I'll show 'em tired.'"

During the finals, Mr. Drover was up against American Brandon Cunningham, who has been world champion three years in a row.

"The intimidation was pretty high for me," he said. "But at the same time, I brought myself back down because really I'm not racing him, I'm racing the clock."

Mr. Drover said they were both pretty close in time, but then his competitor missed on the rope hoisting.

"That was it, game over, as soon as he missed it," he said. "It was probably the smoothest race I ever ran in my life. I just took off and I just stayed calm, felt good, and the next thing I knew, I was across the line with a personal best again."

Mr. Drover finished with a time of 1:26.51.

It was Canada's day to shine at the international event; four of the top men in the individual competition were Canadians.

"To me, this is like the Stanley Cup," he said of winning the competition. "I'm going to defend it again next year."

Mr. Drover said he also has his sights set on an upcoming Canadian national title.