C-Forum

I was thinking about the penalties awarded to C boats in slalom the other day, and was wondering if anyone knew why we are awarded 10 seconds on our score for a touch, while kayaks are only awarded 2?

It doesn't really make sense because kayaks can sneak their decks under the gates, while our big OC boats can't.
I know that's one of the reasons we don't compete against kayaks, but still
!
Anyone have any idea?
Just curious

Nate

The rules committee debates thiis topic every year.

The reasons that I remember (in no particular order) are:

Tradition

Open boating is supposed to be a skill sport more than grunt, so accuracy is given more importance.

If the penalties were less, it might be worth hitting some poles on purpose in order to save time, making a mighty scoring mess. Frankly, I know of less than a dozen people who wouldn't gain 2 seconds by doing some fairly serious pole-whackin' on upstreams with a race boat. And with plastic, that number is a lot smaller.

If the above were true, radically swinging gates from paddler number one might make paddler number two's clean negotiation nearly impossible unless we leave a lot of time between paddlers. As it is now, since most touches are pretty subtle, the gates quiet down quickly.

And it gives us old guys a chance.

Nate:

I am a newer OC racer, with about 4 years of racing some of the NESS races. Each year I appreciate the penalty system a little more.

The large (10 seconds) penalty is intimidating when figuring out how to find a way through some of the lines on the course. However, it has had a huge impact on my development of boat control and that has made me a much better paddler. As Bob said- it would be too tempting to slam through the gates if there was less of a penalty; although there have been plenty of runs when I wished the penalty was 5 seconds instead of 10. That just tells me to improve my finesse and control.

Yeah- the kayaks have it easy, but so do the C-1s. Last year at Bob's race I had 2 clean C-1 runs, but none of my 4 OC runs were clean. That is the fun challenge of the sport.

Thank you, I had just been wondering. I'm a VERY new racer (last race in last September), and am only fourteen years old. Those are all adequate reasons, and anyway, all of us OCers are racing against each other with the same penalties so it doesn't really matter.

I know at the race I went to, my stern touched seven gates out of somewhere around twenty, and even though my time wasn't bad, I got seventy seconds worth of penalties. Then looking at the scores posted, I noticed that some kayakers had hit more gates, but still'd had better times.
I wished I could've shaved off the back end of my boat--that's the hardest part to keep from touching.

Nate

NateOC wrote:...

I know at the race I went to, my stern touched seven gates out of somewhere around twenty, and even though my time wasn't bad, I got seventy seconds worth of penalties. Then looking at the scores posted, I noticed that some kayakers had hit more gates, but still'd had better times.
I wished I could've shaved off the back end of my boat--that's the hardest part to keep from touching.

Nate

Oh yeah. I remember multiple stern touches well.

I watch Kaz leaving upstreams. He starts his turn downstream earlier than just about anyone. It sure looks easy.

The most amazing thing to me is the Medium boaters like Woody and Chuck, not powerhouses but craftsmen, using perfect control to guide a LOT of boat through offsets.

It's all in the stroke and knowing how long the boat is.

At least that's what I'm told.

If I remember correctly, The ICF dropped penalties to 2 seconds to make slalom more appealing to the Olympics.

At the same time they shortened courses and reduced the number of gates. In addition they adopted the current Qualifier, Semi-Final, Final format - All in the name of Olympic appeal.

As Open boats are not on olympic card, the rules changes have not been made by ACA.

F

"I watch Kaz leaving upstreams. He starts his turn downstream earlier than just about anyone. It sure looks easy. "

At the race I went to I watched Casey Eichfeld (who I was racing against) go through the gates without any touches and thought to myself "that doesn't look too hard"

Then my run sounded like "clunk. Wham!"

But now I have a slalom boat so hopefully it might make it a little easier.

Nate

also were the races at the same level? like national or usack, because we run a different penalty for local races than the national or world cup level.
cheers
-isaac

Nate:

Keep in mind that making it look easy is a sure sign of a good racer. Casey makes it look easy in C-1, but so does Kaz in OC-1.

Historically, both open and decked boats originally raced by the same rules, which called for a 10 second penalty for each POLE (yep, that's right, each POLE, not each GATE). If you hit both poles you would add 20 seconds to your score for that gate alone. This was dropped to 5 second per POLE (I believe around 1980), in part to encourage greater speed. Of course, you still had reverse gates at that time in which your stern had to be a least slightly more downstream than the bow for the entire time that you executed the gate. I recall that open boats and decked boats both followed these new rules for awhile.

The next change was to go to 5 seconds per GATE. You could hit either one pole or both poles of the same gate and you would still only get one 5-second penalty. I'm a little more fuzzy on the timing of this change, but I want to say late 80s. (Folks, let me know if you recall better.) I believe that open boats briefly went along with this decked boat rule change, but decided that they wanted to emphasize correct negotiation more than speed and went back to a 10-second penalty per GATE that was similar to the old 5-second penalty per POLE, but assessed all at once regardless of whether you hit one pole or two. I'm not sure of the timing on this (i.e. both the year it happened and whether it was before decked boats moved to a 2-second penalty per gate), but the trend is clear - decked boats increasingly emphasized speed (and with later rule changes in which both runs count, consistency); open boats opted for more traditional rules that emphasized boat control, but retained the ability to have only the better of two runs count.

John

John:

Thanks for the history, it is informative.

Just to place another twist on Nate's question, according to the rules "The width of the gates is 47 inches (1.2m) minimum, and 11'6" (3.5m) maximum, measured between the poles" (from http://users.bestweb.net/~keech/oc-rule5.pdf). Any thoughts / comments on gate width?

I have encountered gates that appear narrower than 47", including at nationals last year.

Nate- I bet 47" never looked so small when approaching it from the middle of a 13' or 15' long boat. Little movements make the ends of the boat travel quite a ways and then "clunk", there's another penalty.

We almost could.ll now my boat's an inch and a half narrower and a foot shorter. 11'8 long and twenty five inches wide and camoflouge. (I still'd don't think almost two of those could fit through a 47inch gate) but supposedly they almost can.)


Nate