Bring the YFC Tug of War weights down

For all those who compete in the YFC Tug of War events

From experience of competing in the Young Farmers tug of war you may believe that the weights for the men’s and ladies tug of war are too heavy. Your team personally have not managed to get anywhere near the weights especially the women’s team that are needed, and we believe a lot of other teams struggle too.

The ladies young farmers 580kg is not even a recognised weight at any level of tug of war competition in the international federation rules.
For any ladies team to be on the 580kg weight each female would have to weigh 11.5 stone, this is ridiculous, for them to be healthy at 11.5 stone they would have to be 5‘7 tall…….there isn’t many of them about!

With regards to the men’s 680kg young farmers’ weight. At international level this is regarded as a heavy weight, with there also being 640kg, 600kg and 560kg which are all lighter than the young farmers’ weight. This is asking for a healthy 13.5 stone man being no shorter than 6‘1!

We know it isn’t all about the weight to height ratio, but do you feel that there is a lot of pressure for young farmers clubs competing in tug of war to meet the target weight to stand a chance of doing well.

Therefore they look for the larger young farmers to take part, generally overweight and unfit. This is how injuries are caused and people’s healths are put at risk.

This petition will be used as support at the national Federation of young farmers Agm in Blackpool 2009 if the proposal is put through.