This hasn’t been brought up here yet. Its getting close. Got favorites?
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The jamaican team.
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How its done…
C-1 men:
And K-1 women:
There may (or may not) be folks here who aspire to this sort of thing, but darn, these folks “do it good.” We should all at least be able to appreciate it - although I grant you, these artificial courses look like something out of a Ninja Warrior episode. But the flow is the same for everyone - its fair…
Is there any whitewater in Jamaica? Never been there. Its gotta be better for paddling than for bobsledding… Heaven for sea kayakers, I’d think.
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Sprints start Aug. 1.
USA actually has a hope for a medal with Nevin Harrison in C-1. Been a long time since we had any hope at all in sprint canoe and kayak.
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Thanks for the links. Outstanding skills.
Slovenian Southpaw,
slidin’ the sluice.
His offside makes onside
of mine look wounded goose,
ducking into disaster
that’s dunked in dire fate,
as I flop at first drop
to miss twenty-five gates.
But HEY! When’s it’s C2 in a 70-lb. Explorer, I tend to blame the bowman, especially when he rears up on deckplate and shakes his hindquarters to send you that first facial rooster tail.
“Stupid dog, ya make me look bad!”
I knew I should have portaged.
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Awesome skills to be admired by anyone…paddler or not. Of course only paddlers really know HOW skilled these folks are.
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Ya’ know CWDH - I look at that and wonder how anyone could put a Flashback (or most other whitewater OCs) through that, hit the gates, and come out any way but swamped at the end, though “way back when” that’s what a Flashback was made to do. (Heck, I’ve filled it on the Flambeau in waves much smaller than that.) Of course I’m nowhere near as good as these folks - hard to believe we’re from the same planet. Maybe Pete could make it through there, or Bob, or Rob, or Heather, but I doubt they’d make all the gates - and they’re darned GOOD. (And not a throw bag in sight,)
Surely someone here follows this kind of competitive paddling more closely than I - A question: I’ve noticed that in most of the videos I’ve seen of these runs there’s usually one downstream gate that the paddlers run backward - facing upstream. Looks like gate 6 on this run. Is that a requirement of the competition? A set up for a move on the next gate? I’d think it would be a time losing move since eventually it would take a second or two to turn around again, though they do go through the downstream gate downstream…
Perhaps there should be a class for dog owning paddlers? Like a Westminster dog show with rapids. Dogs I’ve paddled with sleep in the bow until we start hitting waves and then they get up and stroll around or put their front paws on the gunwale to see what’s happening. Bet Paris would be a champ.
And wouldn’t you think the Canadians would “own” this competition given how many top-notch whitewater paddlers hail from there and their cultural heritage connection?
And, yeah, looks like an easy portage… no nasty hills, downed trees, or ankle-turning rocks to clamber over. A real BWCA paddler could do that one on the run.
There are just not the Olympics going on right now including paddling. The 2021 crossfit games opened this year with a swim and paddle event. These athletes don’t know the events until an hour before. They are prepared that there will be some sort of swim and maybe a paddleboard or something. This year they tossed them a few curves with a back-to-back one-mile swim with swim-fins required and a three-mile kayak paddle.
The swim starts around 28:00 and the fastest paddlers at 54:00. The male winner did it in just over an hour. This was event one of four events equally as hard they had to do on day one on Wednesday and it is over on Sunday.
Thought some of you might find it interesting to watch. The video contains all 10+ hours of day one. It is also streamed live on youtube.
Olympics on YouTube posted by NBC tell you who won before you watch it on many of them. Then I just need to see who’s second, third, fourth, …
Nevin Harrison, from Seattle, won the inaugural Gold for women’s flatwater canoeing. She was the only American who even qualified for a flatwater event.
Yahoo has a good story about her. Her doctor told her sports were lost to her at age 12 because of a hip problem.
She switched to high kneel canoe and made history.
Hopefully she will be celebrated and we will see increased competition among our younger paddlers.
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