A Greater Victoria man has found himself to be a world champion of a game that has been played for centuries after playing almost perfectly throughout the championships held in the Tri-Cities in Washington.

Tom Moffat, from Langford, won first place in the 65+ Elders A division at the National Horseshoe Pitchers Association World Tournament from July 29 to Aug. 3, with 14 wins, 524 points and a ringer percentage of just over 78 per cent.

"It's just starting to sink in," said Moffat. "It's a goal you always have, to do something like that but you never think it's going to happen."

He has been horseshoe pitching since 2002, he said, when he "bumped" into the Greater Victoria Horseshoe Association, which operates one of the biggest horseshoe facilities in North America with over two dozen pitches.

Moffat, who is also the president of Horseshoe Canada, won the Canadian Championships in July. He then went on to win a qualifying round for the world championships before winning the world tournament where he won all but one game.

He says he sees the sport slowly growing again since the COVID-19 Pandemic, mentioning the Sooke-based club that has built 12 new pitches since 2015, and as president of the national organization, he's always looking to promote the sport to a new audience.

He said horseshoes is easy to learn, but it can be hard to master.

"it just takes practice and timing and figuring out what you're doing right and what you're doing wrong," he said. "We get people who play cornhole come out and try horseshoes and they go 'Oh, this is way to hard,' because you have to hit the pin and you have to have the shoe open or it's not going on."