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August 30, 2005

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New York’s Black River, in Watertown, at the
Route 3 Wave was the sight of the first of two events making up the North
American Championships for 2005. The second event is this coming weekend
on the Ottawa River in Ontario, Canada. So far the medal count is as follows:

Canada:
Gold: 3
Silver: 1
Bronze: 2

USA:
Gold: 2
Silver: 4
Bronze: 3

Total points going into the finals for each country:

Canada: 13
USA: 17

The finals are in Canada and all of the medalists for
Canada at the Black River event are from the Ottawa river so I expect
a tough competition with the Canadians coming on strong.

How the event went down:

The water levels for the event were low for practice.
This meant that the wave was a little shallow at first, but the foam pile
made a good catcher’s mitt for doing Flip Turns, and Helixes. On
Friday, the day before the competition, the water went up and completely
greened out the wave. On Saturday for prelims, the wave was totally green
unless a boater was on the wave and made a little eddy foam pile behind
their boat. This made the moves a lot tougher to stick on the wave. Blunts,
backstabs, even spins got tougher with top level athletes washing off
the wave on a clean spin from time to time. The prelims format was three
rides, two count. This allowed us to drop our lowest ride score. My first
ride was a decent one for 30 of the 45 seconds, but I flushed early. My
second ride was a full 45 seconds of very high energy paddling, getting
every move I went for, which put me in the semi-finals with that ride
alone. Jimmy Blakeney had two really good rides to place him second in
prelims and Stephen Wright had one really good ride, and two not so good
rides, but his one really good ride put him in third in prelims. Andre’
from Watertown made the cut, as well as Clay Wright, Corey Volt, Andrew
Holcomb, and Bryan Kirk. All of this took place on Saturday.

Saturday evening we went to the wine and cheese tasting
party before the Tommy Gunn and Mountain MoJo concert at the park adjacent
to the wave. Tommy Gunn knows how to run and event! There were shuttles
running every ½ hour from the campground to the wave, as well as
to the parties. At all times there were things going on from the time
the opening ceremonies started, to the closing ceremonies at the end.
Kristine and I tasted all of the wines of New York, and sampled plenty
of cheeses to go with it, buying 5 bottles of various wines to take home
too. We went to the Sackets Harbor Brew Pub for dinner and then hit the
sack.

The competition started at noon both days, giving anyone
who wanted time to train before it, and anyone who wanted to sleep in
time to do that also. Tommy Gunn and Sara, the organizers went to the
world championships in Austria to watch, as well as the European Championships
in Sort, Spain where they know how to put on a fun event. They have adopted
many of the better parts of those events to what will quickly become the
east coast favorite among kayakers who really want to have a good time
at a kayak event.

Sunday’s competition was both the Semi-finals
and Finals rounds. In the Sem-finals, the men would cut to three from
eight competitors; a big cut. In this round we got two rides and the best
one counted. The wave was still green but a little steeper, making the
aerial moves a little easier, and the hardest moves a little easier to
stick. I flushed off the wave after 30 seconds on both of my semi-finals
rides, getting only 45 points on one ride and 41 on the other. Brian Kirk
had a great second ride to get a 69 on that one, winning the semi-finals.
Andrew Holcomb had a 40 point ride to get 3rd, also making the finals.
Just out was Corey Volt who threw the only McNasty of the competition,
as well as almost sticking an air screw, but ended up 4th with 37 points.

The finals were intense as always with Andrew Holcomb
doing his ride and getting 44 points, setting the bar high enough that
an early flush would likely be the end of the line for this event. Since
I was second in semi-finals, I had to go next. I opted for the aggressive
approach, throwing my moves with full power, and going fast. I got through
all of my aerial blunts and backstabs quickly, and nailed my first flip-turn
with maybe 5 seconds left. I was high enough on the wave to get a drop
in for a snappy Helix and I pulled it off, getting a 74 and moving me
on for sure. It was then up to Bryan Kirk who did a 69 point ride on his
last one to beat the 44 put up by Andrew to move on to the head to head
show down. Bryan got off and running nicely nailing his Flip Turn (he
does beautiful flip turns) but wasn’t able to get air on most of
his blunts and then flushed early, coming in with a 24 point ride, meaning
that the head to head final showdown would be between Andrew Holcomb and
I.

In 2001 IR Triple Crown/USA Team Trials Andrew and
I battled head to head in three events in a row. In the first one, I won.
In the second one, he won. And in the last one, I won. He is an awesome
competitor and does really well under pressure.

My score was bigger on the last round so Andrew had
to go first. He started off quickly with some sweet vertical blunts and
backstabs both ways, then popping them in the air with a snappy technique
that is fun to watch. He went for a flip turn, first one not getting quite
popped off the water and vertical so he went for another one and got it
with a few seconds left on the clock. His last move was an air screw that
didn’t quite land at the buzzer, but his ride was sweet coming in
at 48 points. Clay gave me last minute advice which was go get 48 points
and then go big. I think it was good advice, but I think he was suggesting
that I don’t try to get the world record score at the risk of flushing
and losing. I went somewhere in the middle, going for the big or huge
bonus on the blunt moves, and then watching Kristine on the bank while
doing my flipturn to solidify the win, pulling off the wave before the
buzzer, which may not been a good idea, but I did anyhow. My score was
a 55, which was enough to beat Andrew’s 48.

I couldn’t really believe that I had done it
this time. Some of the best wave boaters around were competing against
me on this green wave. My body was just healed enough to compete, but
in terrible shape, and hurting all over from weeks of inactivity due to
the injury. My timing came back fairly quickly and I felt like I was paddling
up to snuff except that I couldn’t train hard without blowing my
body out.

Undefeated still, I look forward to the second event
of the North American Championships here on the Ottawa. The water is too
low for the Garberator right now but will likely come up for the event.

Perhaps Emily can write about her bronze metal, and
Dane about his competition.

🙂 EJ

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