Paddler's Steamboat Invitational Rocked!

May 30, 2006

By Stephen Wright. Learn more about Stephen.

The first-ever Paddler Magazine’s 15th anniversary Pro Invitational event
was exciting, unique, fun-to-watch, and showcased some incredible paddling.
For competitors, it was run as a combined event, with both an extreme race
and a freestyle event counting towards the final event placement. They also
managed to run both the race and the freestyle in 1 day, which was quite an
organizational feat! Everything ran smoothly, however, and the Memorial Day
Steamboat crowd showed-up in force to enjoy the show. Jackson Kayaks was
well-represented with Ruth Gordon and Devon Barker competing in the women’s
class, and Jay Kincaid, Stephen Wright, and Kevin Dombey in the men’s. Clay
Wright was asked to attend as the Head Judge, and kept things moving.

The Fish Creek Race was first, starting at 10:30 am in a beautiful canyon
featuring 2 miles of SUPER-continuous class IV frigidly cold water. The run
was incredibly fun to practice and race on, because it was basically one
rapid all the way to the bottom. 4 1/2 minutes, several brain-freezes, and
two frozen hands later, racers were found at the finish line sucking wind,
and enjoying the sunny day. Jay was fast like a gazelle and ended-up in
3rd, while I was slower (like a hippo) and took 9th (out of 21 male racers).
Kevin Dombey impressed his hometown crowd by choosing to start his race by
seal-launching off the bridge into the course!

Results for the race:

Men’s
1st Brad Ludden

2nd Tao Berman

3rd Jay Kincaid

Women’s

1st Tanya Faux

2nd Nikki Kelly

3rd Eleanor Perry

Next up was the freestyle event, kicking-off at 3:00 pm in the middle of
town. Hundreds of spectators arrived to enjoy the show. The hole was
kicking! It was a big, powerful, fast Rock-Island-style hole that gave-up
big air, and big poundings. The women went first, and put on an impressive
show with loops, clean cartwheels, blunts, air backstabs, and more that I
can’t remember. When it was all said and done, Devon took 3rd and Ruth was
in 4th or 5th. The men went next and stepped it up a notch with lots of
McNastys, huge air loops, clean blunts, clean backstabs, back loops, and
more! Jay hit his ride consistently, and dominated prelims, while I trailed
in 2nd. After the next round, it was cut to the top 3, which were Jay, Todd
Baker, and some jerk named Stephen. I had a bad ride and was knocked to
3rd, while Todd and Jay battled it out for top to places. Jay DOMINATED the
freestyle event all day, and took first. What a blast!

Results for the Freestyle:

Men’s
1st Jay Kincaid

2nd Todd Baker

3rd Stephen Wright

Women’s

1st Tanya Faux

2nd Tanya Shuman

3rd Devon Barker

They used a system awarding a set number of points to finish placement in
each event to calculate the overall winners. This made it so that everyone
had to do well in both events. There were some who only competed in one
event, but they weren’t able to place in the overall standings. It was a
pretty cool way to do things!

OVERALL PLACING:

Men’s

1st JAY KINCAID

2nd Brad Ludden

3rd STEPHEN WRIGHT

Women’s

1st Tanya Faux

2nd Nikki Kelly

3rd RUTH (Flash) GORDON

Jen took all the cool pix for the day, enjoy!

Live from Steamboat Springs Starbucks,

Stephen Wright