Busy 2 days in Prague- T-minus 2 Days to World Cup Opening Ceremonies

August 13, 2008

The past two days was like a blur. Official National Team Training Slots began. International Canoe Federation- ICF- now the International Governing Body for Freestyle is doing a three day rules seminar and discussion about the final version of the Freestyle Rules for the 2008 World Cup and 2009 World Championships. Where the main rules, known as the “General Rules” and the “Technical Rules” are officially set, the Appendix is still being discussed, tweaked, and final wording created. The Appendix includes the descriptions of each move, as well as the scribe sheet (score sheet). The IFC committee which consists of 4 Europeans and 1 North American collected the information on scoring systems currently used for the World Championships and World Cup and focused on creating the next generation. Many improvements were made to the USA/Canada scoring system used internationally in the past. There were still many little things to clean up but it was an impressive piece of work. The past two days have been 9 hour mentally challenging sessions. Discussions are very polite, very well meaning, with Russia, Holland, Germany, Czech, Japan, France, Canada, USA, Slovakia, and more all speaking their best English. At times I am the only one that doesn’t know what is going on because I can’t hear what people are saying. Clay Wright and Nick Troutman were the other two North Americans attending. Ingrid Schmidt, and Juta Kiser were the two hosts/mediators, both from Germany. While it is an incredible experience to be a part of the next chapter in the history of freestyle, it is quite draining while attempting to train and watch over a team, and kids.

This morning I woke at 5:45am after having to move into the van at 2am due to rain. I am sleeping in a sleeping bag on my boat bag on the grass. Three of the past 5 days I have been woken up to rain in the night. I paddled until 7:30 am and then got out and coached the USA team from 8-9am. At 9am, I hosted a USA/Canada Team Meeting to see if there were any questions or ideas about the rules before we went into this final rule setting meeting. At 9:30 I arrived at the meeting, late, and without breakfast. We broke for lunch at 1pm, but I wanted to do another training session during an “open session” and went paddling. I was weak, tired, thirsty, and dizzy. I did 5 rides that were OK, but not good. The meeting started at 2:30pm again, where we had left off on the hole moves and it was time to discuss the wave moves, combos, big air bonuses, entry moves, etc. I brought some cocoa puffs and ate them dry. At 5:30pm we met at the hole to put into action the written rules we just tweaked. WOW! France judges much different than the USA, as does Russia, and more. The European judging tends to be much more strict. What does this mean? Is it good or bad? Well, it means that people are less encouraged to try hard moves for sure. Which may be one reason that the Europeans tend not to do the hardest moves as often. The North Americans may practice their moves sloppier than the Europeans because of that and not have the same quality in some cases. It is interesting for sure. The good news is that there is a spirit of cooperation I haven’t seen between North America, the Africas, Australia/New Zealand, and Europe in this sport since the New Zealand World Championships in 1999, and this time it is way better!

I finished at 6:30pm and was so tired, thirsty, and hungry that I wasn’t sure I could make it to the restaurant. I walked the 15 minutes there, stopping at the grocery store first, only to find it closed (no water for the night). I went alone, not wanting to say another word for the day if possible. I ordered two orders of crepes, two cappuccinos, and four small bottles of water to go. It felt good to just sit and eat, finally at 7pm for the first time. If Kristine were here she would kill me! She assures that I eat, sleep, drink, train, etc. on time, and properly. She would have been in this meeting in my proxy, of course, but is pre-disposed with little KC.

I did get to watch Peter Czonka do a practice ride tonight and it was incredible! While he only got third in the European Championships, (silver in World Champs last year), he is showing that he is clearly one of the men to beat! I had to see it to be sure, and now I have. Whoa- we have some serious competition in the Europeans!

Tomorrow I have one final day of rules/judging meetings. This time we are actually taking a written test, and then a verbal judging test to get our official ICF judging cards for Freestyle. While I would have called BS on the whole concept before, I am very much a believer, since it creates communication between the new judge and the existing judges and ICF which means everyone learns and improves.

Back to my poor status as an athlete. I now aim to recover ASAP. I have paddled so hard from the Spring in California, Nevada, etc., to Colorado, to the Grand Canyon, and then to the Ottawa to prepare for this logging more 4+ weeks at a time without a day off. Now I am here and have been doing 3-4 sessions each day, getting up early, training hard, eating OK, sleeping not so OK, and then these meetings. With only three days until the Competition starts, it is time to let the brain and body regroup and be ready. I am running on fumes, with a well tuned up engine. Time for fuel and to cool off. I do still have the issue that I haven’t been able to check email for 4 days as I was email bombed with a full mail box of 133mb including 12,000+ emails. I can’t clean it up from here and it is hard enough to get in a 3 mb file! I hope the folks at the JK factory have cleaned up for me so I can try tomorrow. My Verizon cell phone doesn’t work in Europe, and my email is in disarray. So the “how’s Kristine?” and the “how are things at the factory?” questions can’t be answered by me at the moment. You will most likely be reading this update and my last one at the same time, sorry!

I won the 2004 Pre-Worlds, the 2005 Worlds, the 2006 World Cup, and the 2007 Worlds. This is each of the major international comps of the past 4 years. In 2004 there wasn’t a world cup, just a pre-worlds. Coming into the 2008 World Cup, I clearly have a big bulls-eye on my back. Whether it be from my future son-in-law Nick, or Peter Czonka, or Stephen Wright, Clay, or the other 87 athletes from 30+ countries, they at least are looking to see if my “time has come”. This isn’t much different for me than in 2002 when I was coming off of winning the 2000 Pre-Worlds, and the 2001 World Championships. Unfortunately for me in 2002 and 2003 I got 5th and 4th. I made my “comeback” to the top of the podium in 2004. I have a long streak of winning and losing. I won in 1993, then failed to go to Pre-Worlds in 1994, then lost in 1995 (I tore a rib muscle in the first 30 seconds of my first finals ride), then got 6th in 1996, 2nd in 1997 at the World Championships. In 1998 I won every round until I got knocked out in a knockout finals in 4th place, and then in 1999 I won up to the round I flushed off the wave twice on my first move getting 9th in that World Championships in New Zealand. Each time I felt ready and able to win, but often, I did not. My recent streak is my longest ever. With so many variables in between the prelims and winning the finals, it is always “anything can happen day”. Will I get my opening hard move? Will I get the huge bonus on my moves, as I am counting on for 50% of the big ones? What will the other paddlers get? Will they perform like rock stars, like Dustin Urban did on his final ride in Vail this year, or will they have average rides during finals under the pressure of the crowd, the desire for the win, and the fear of the unknown? Will they falter entirely? Will I? If we knew the answers, we could all go home and just write down the results and it would be over without going on the playing field.

Well it is now 8:31pm and it is getting dark. I am in dire need of a shower and could get one by going outside in the rain. I have my sleeping pad and bag under the van and am hoping that by the time I brush my teeth the clouds will go away and I can sleep outside.

🙂