2007 World championships Results, Video & Photos

Photos

Today the Men Battled each other and Buseater for the right to continue in the World Championships for the next round… Team JK/All-Star take top 2 positions and 3 of the top 4.

Today was a long day with the Men’s Kayak class competing in prelims which will cut the field to 20 from 70 of the world’s best. Nick Troutman, paddling the 2007 All-Star and hailing from Beachburg, Ontario set the bar high in the first heat with 185 points for two rides combined and nobody beat that score all day! Billy Harris nailed 4 great rides and his best two gave him a solid second place finish with 146 points. Billy is also paddling the new All-Star. Andrew Holcomb tore it up on two of his rides putting down some big moves and was clearly having a great time doing it and took the third place spot in the process. I had one big ride out of my 4 and three small ones putting me in 4th with the two rides combined. Jay Kincaid had a great 1st ride and some sweet moves in his 4 Fun and he is currently in 8th or 9th place. Anthony Yapp from Australia did some of his quick snappy moves for a solid 5th place.

My routine was Pan Am left and right, Clean Backstab left and right, Back Pan Am left and right, right helix, left clean blunt/Mcnasty combo, and left airscrew. I only got as far as my back pan ams on my best ride and there is plenty of room for improvement for me. I got 50% of the score I could get with some luck and a more aggressive approach. Prelims are always weird for me. It is like trying to go on vacation and you take the first day and drive a few miles, and if that went well, you go home and plan on leaving the next day for a little bit further. Bad analogy, maybe, but it feels like that. I get more worked up for prelims than I do in the later rounds. I hate knowing that I don’t have to have a great ride to advance. It messes with my mind. I do better when I have to perform really well to advance. I don’t let a pass go by without throwing a move with all I have when I know that is not only a good idea, but required to stay in the game. Today I let a lot of passes go by without throwing a move. Like in Top Gun after Maverick crashed and his next time up in the air he failed to engage and attack because “it just doesn’t look good”. Throwing a big move and landing it on Buseater is not easy. Landing with an edge down and you dig right off, land with your boat too flat and you powerflip under the wave. Land it planing and sliding and it is like butter. Hesitate on takeoff and you don’t launch. Fail to get your boat moving towards the sweet spot of the wave before you launch into the air and you land off the wave with zero chance of sticking it, our you land on the other side of Buseater known as the toilet bowl which is a 50% chance at best of recovering and making it out of there with your head above water and on the wave.

So what does all of these things do to the top 70 men competing? They create a variety of approaches. “go all out” which is often one big move and flush, or “be careful” which is a lot of low moves that don’t get scored well, or it creates a scared boater that can’t focus on doing their best, and then it also produces people like Nick Troutman who just does what he loves to do best… manhandle a really big wave and throw whatever move he wants in the order he chooses. Nick is really the man to beat here on his home wave. He did a practice ride this evening after the competition was over where he did his whole routine in completion…twice! I am not talking about a wimpy routine, either. He did a Pan am, Clean blunt, back pan am, air screw, helix, and mcnasty! (that is what I remember, he may have done more). 18 years old, nervous in his first worlds, but just like when he was on the Alseseca Expedition in Mexico doing class 6 runs in the filming of Hotel Charlie, he always steps it up and gets the job done in good form. I can’t express how fun it is for me to have a kid that was goofy, not the best paddler, but a nice as can be and motivated, and have him turn into a powerhouse paddler with more skills than most pros will ever possess in their lives and not a bad bone in his body.

So what about me? I try to win every round, and today got 4th in prelims. I had some impressive moves but was under the radar in my rides, and not on purpose. My practices at Inner City Strife were pretty much unbeatable, with 170+ single rides (the best ride today was under 100 points). Buseater is a tougher wave and I am not in harmony with it yet. The last time I surfed it was in 2004 and it is one bounce bigger than any wave I have ever trained on. That simply means that the timing is different and timing is everything. I think I am close to getting the timing down. When your timing is off you try to bounce the boat into a liftoff position but you counteract the natural liftoff bounce and you just surf down the wave and nothing happens and you get zero points instead of the move you were attempting. This can screw up your whole ride making it like you can’t do anything. I am 50% on my timing and just about over the hump where I don’t have to think about it longer than I have to make my move. That point is where I can unleash the beast; a move on every pass and a big one. I still am focused on achieving 150+ point rides at this world championships. During finals would be a good time to achieve this, of course, but I will attempt it on every ride. Big and Huge bonuses really help the scores. I just found out that my Pan Ams (forward ones) are not scoring as Pan Ams because of my technique. I am waiting too long to pull the hull over me and I am vertical, over the water, and hull facing upstream, but the hull isn’t over my head until I am already vertical. This is causing me to turn a 16 point move into an 8 point move, which is the difference between being in 2nd right now or 4th. That is something I will fix tomorrow easily. The timing is hopeful tomorrow. We cut from 20 of the top paddlers today to 10. Some of the big name boaters couldn’t seem to get a good ride going today. Steve Fisher is eliminated, Marlo Long, Ben Marr, and more failed to make the cut.

Tomorrow is Prelims for junior men, junior women, women, and c1s. Dane and Emily compete tomorrow!

I hope Dane and Emily have a good time on the wave and perform to their satisfaction. Emily is doing great on the rope towing in and has great control on the wave. Dane probably has the biggest move thrown on Buseater since it came in three days ago and gets ridiculously long rides. Hopefully he can resist doing 4 left Pan Ams in a row!

It is now Thursday morning at 6:30am and Emily competes in 2.5 hours. Like in the U2 song, “Time is a train; makes the future the past” this competition is going to keep going and we will soon know how things turn out. Each athlete has their shot at putting down good rides and they can’t stop or say time out.

I will put up the scores later so you can see how your friends or favorite kayakers did. I am waiting on the score sheets.

The next time I write something I will hopefully be able to say that there are 5 of the men’s kayakers on Team Jackson Kayak in the top 10 (Richard Grimes from England, Jay, Nick, Billy, and myself), and that the junior men, women, and C1s made it.

2007 world championships video part 1 (QuickTime 2.8 MB)

Results

Rank

Name

Score

Country

Nick Troutman

185

Canada

Billy Harris

146

Canada