Proposed ICF rule changes

[bearboater]

as far as charlotte is concerned, I moved there for 1 reason, to get batter at slalom fast. It was was place to be last fall, and this spring, there were so many high level athletes there all of the time. It truly enhanced the paddling I, well, am now able to do. But as far as the actual feel of the place, not so much a fan, I would rather train at ASCI all year round instead of charlotte, the course is softer, the features more interesting, and in ways more challenging. But the thing charlotte has on asci, is the artificial feeling that charlotte has more of, it is by far better water. it's more comparable to what you would find in europe racing. so hence the allure. also it is the premier training venue in the U.S. with a year round operation. but if I were able to make asci year round, I would be there in a heart beat. I don't like taking people to charlotte, because they all get banged up in someway. where as asci, they stand a chance of having fun. charlotte is an interesting bag of tricks, very quick transitions, and asci has more funky currents...
but they are both valid training venues, and I feel however, that asci has more potential due to the powers that be in the ASCI area are far more geared toward development/training for slalom. they are giving the U.S. team a week block in the summer for training before the games... that's a positive step.
all in all we're stuck in a cement playground, either way you look at it, i am searching for the environment, more so than the premier venue, but we will see...
cheers
-isaac

[Trevor]

thanks isaac, interesting comments. i definately agree with you, theres no doubt its helps build boater skills quickly, but i wonder if its going to grow the base of the sport as quickly.

yeh, i think as far as preperation for european races, and obviously the Olympics, im sure the charlotte course will make the U.S. even more competitive in the world. seems like its already helping. but its seems to be a course made for full runs only, and not many places for a coach to sit on the bank and coach athletes on the water, etc., short courses, loops, and other things going on at the same time, etc.

much like dickerson (though dickerson obviously wasnt designed from scratch), the high walls prevent any interaction between a boat on the water and a coach/spectator/curious kid, etc on the bank.

seems like the more "community" good river architecture can produce (for example, eddies that can easily hold a number of boaters, lots of access points to get in and out of the river, less isolation feeling, then the more the sport draws in new racers, beginners, etc. i think the more interaction between expert and novice paddlers, boaters and spectators, etc, the more the sport can grow. its seems unlikely a curious kid can ask a boater about slalom, if they are peering down from a 10' vertical wall. they are just as disconnected as if they were peering down from the grand canyon rim, looking at rafters. again river edge architecture.

i wonder if when a 8 or 9 year old kid who comes to the charlotte course for the first time, do they feel like..."man i want to do this", or do they have the look as if they were looking a bobsled track, or ski jump..."i could never do that!"...i just wonder if having the central focus of the charlotte course the competition channel, it sends the wrong message..."experts only" instead of "newbie/novice/intermediate/advanced/expert/Olympic champions all welcome". if the competition channel was simply at the back of the site, and a class I-III course at the competition course location, it might actually send a better message to the first time visitor...."heck, i can do this...that looks fun!"...tiger woods may have never stuck with golf, if he had to start at the pro tees. maybe the USNWC, should be renamed the USOWC (O for Olympic), seems more appropriate.

i thought the center was supposed to be the answer to introducing the sport, to a large and whole new generation of boaters, developing boaters of every age, in every discipline, to get involved...slalom, wildwater, freestyle, etc. only time will tell, but IMHO, i think it missed the mark at many levels...

i just think the final course design, boater accessibility, scale as related to the human body, river edge, river community, human interaction, etc...all would have been butchered in a 3rd or 4th year college landscape architecture jury (presentation) by most college professors. they would have been saying, "why didnt you think about this...and this...and this"

in all due respect, i know it was a huge project, with huge challenges, and a huge price tag, and the designers should be commended for the engineering, and hardwork, etc...and no final design of anything is ever going to come out perfect...but i also think it needed some serious oversite, and thorough consideration before putting a "fork in it"...and pouring the first concrete.

i wouldnt be surprised if someday, someone comes back in and reshapes, reterraces some of the harsh walls, especially around the bottom drop, that are much higher than need be.

later, monday morning armchair quarterback

[KNeal]

as far as charlotte is concerned, I moved there for 1 reason, to get batter at slalom fast.

Excellent, Isaac! Ummm, one question though--is "batter" a joining of the two words, "better" and "badder"?


BTW, did you and I cross paths at the Olympic Team Trials? I got to be a scoring runner on Friday, so I was on the island the whole day, bugging Jay and Alden.

KNeal

[Alden]

I wish the bottom drop at Charlotte wasn't so shallow, and I wish the eddies down below it were less surgy, more fair. I have heard Erik Amason caught a bad surge that derailed his race on Day 3. Of course, I guess that's all part of the game, but I like to think conditions will be the same for everyone.

I just ran Red Creek in West Virginia yesterday, a spectacular two mile hike in through the Dolly Sods wilderness and then a seven mile class V paddle through a remote and beautiful river gorge. It was a welcome change following a season of training and racing between the high walls that Trevor mentioned at Charlotte (although frankly they allowed me to indulge in my misanthropic tendencies).

However, the whitewater at Charlotte is good. I really enjoy it. Sure, a generation ago, I'd have been basking in the wild surroundings and rugged edge of a sport done on natural rivers, but I'd rather race on the whitewater of Charlotte than Mascoma, Dickerson than the West. It's just more challenging and more exacting, and so on a micro level, while in my boat, I simply love the voluminous feel of racing on what turn out to be, when I notice the plastic obstacles, rapids of deliberate design. But racing on the edge of the tide at Charlotte, boofing into Gate 16 on Day 3, or into Gate 19 upstream below the drop, or peeling out of Gate 18 on a cross just above the drop on Day 2 -- now that's fun you just can't get at your father's (sorry, John!) NOC or Loyalstock.

Of course, while I'm sympathetic to many of Trevor's points about Charlotte, let's not forget that Charlotte wasn't designed to promote the growth of slalom. It was designed to untangle its builders from the mountain of debt they incurred while building it. How else to explain one paddler who was sixth in the country last year (and who had the day before bought a year parking pass on being told it would allow him to park close the next day) having to park a shuttle distance away from the course on race day at the Olympic Trials while "VIPs" were welcomed and allowed to park within walking distance? "You racers aren't VIPs, I guess," one parking attendant told him with not a little irony in his voice. At times like this, does one wish that the Olympic Trials were held squarely in the domain of the racers themselves?

Moreover, I am becoming increasingly uneasy about the environmental ethic of building a Charlotte. As we drove in on that whole new paved road and past the proposed housing developments, I couldn't help feeling that we might have done well to keep the whole place as it once was -- undeveloped. I read that Jeff Wise got the idea for Charlotte while mountain biking there in the wilderness. Have any of you ever seen that sign that a landowner along the usual entrance road put on his fence -- something like, "Bless those who curse you, and pray for those who spitefully use you." Every time I drive by there, I think about the price of "progress."

To change gears --

In talking about the development of slalom, I don't feel a lot of leadership coming from the top. I have never been very happy with USACK. I just have no idea what it is that they do. They seem remote from us. I don't even know who the president is. It seems like they delight in reminding me that I owe them money each year, but I don't feel a lot of leadership. I always have to remind myself that good people like Cathy Hearn and Silvan Poberaj work for USACK.

At the same time, I feel that they have quite a limited scope because they are small and charged with overseeing all paddlesports. Cathy Hearn, who works for USACK, has been a wonderful instrument of development (sometimes to the detriment of the top paddlers), but overall she has a small area of operation -- in part because she is not introducing anyone to the sport, and in part because she is only one person in one place. The lower levels of the sport and the development of the sport extend well beyond the reach of USACK's tentacles (although my email inbox, which contains messages from them titled "USACK Membership: EXPIRED!" does not).

John and other race organizers: can you talk to us about some steps that our sport's "leadership" can undertake that would benefit slalom's development at the lower levels? I still haven't forgiven USACK for letting slide the NESS entry discount we used to get for being USACK members. It just seemed like such a small issue, but it reeked to me of bad faith and clumsy operation.

Alden

[bearboater]

batter was meant to be better. in my tired, quick typing, non-revising state, i didn't care to read my statement... we probably ran into each other at some point, I was wearing a cowboy hat with a media pass taking pictures for USACK...

I agree with Alden on the bottom drop, and it's tendencies. Erik was super unfortunate, he had the exact same line as jeff, but caught a huge surge from no-where... I don't think that there was another inconsistency of that size in the course over the whole weekend...
Also, on the point of charlotte, not development, but rather rafting... I do also think that cathy hearn is a truly valuable element to the sport of canoe slalom... she is a huge support, and a gynormous bank of slalom knowledge...

David Yarborough is the president of usack, i don't know anything that he does. however Chris Hipgrave, and Gerald Babao are great people. they are the work horses of USACK.
anyhow, hope all is well.
I am here Deep Creek MD, for ASCI, just left of heaven...
-isaac

[Trevor]

enlight of the previous discussions about combined runs and TV coverage, i found this quite interesting today.

i assume you guys caught the team trials coverage today. i already knew the results, knew the competitors, and how the scoring worked.

but i was honestly confussed as crap as to how they presented the scoring, etc...they really should have left out the percentage off, that was confusing. do that at the very end, and just show the final results for the last day.....i cant imagine how it came accross to someone who didnt follow slalom. i guess being a 3 day race, it added to the confussion, which the olympics wont have...

i think slalom should go to one practice run (not shown on tv), then just one race run...this might also get more people racing multiple classes, etc

yeh, i'd say that combined runs are much easier to follow on TV, prime example

apparently C1 and C2 will be on the same time next week on msnbc, sunday 12pm ET.....at least according to my tv's info.

[Trevor]

correction...looks like next sunday might be olympic triathalon...but who knows...are they not showing C1 and C2? "good grief, charlie brown"

[John Coraor]

Alden:

I understand your comments about paddling at Charlotte. It is an awesome feeling to master difficult moves in difficult water. Although clearly the definition of "difficult water" has changed since races like S-Turn, the Ocoee Doubleheader, Tohickon, and Tarrifville were on the circuit for the top US racers. I'm sure that I would be debris on the course if I ran Charlotte.

But, getting back to slalom development at the lower levels...

I think that a part, perhaps a minor part, of the problem stems from the creation of USACK as an organization devoted solely to canoe and kayak competition, which has naturally lead to a pretty exclusive focus on the elite athelete. When I was racing seriously, that function was performed by various committees of the ACA (e.g. a WW Slalom Committee) comprised of people involved in the sport (e.g. racers, coaches, former racers, etc.). That meant that there was only one organization (ACA) that was involved in recreational canoe/kayak development as well as canoe/kayak competition and at least had the potential for a broader perspective with more cooperation among programs aimed at elite competitors vs. those targeted at other paddling groups. Certainly, you had only one membership in one organization.

Unfortunately, as I understand it, somebody (it has never been clear to me whether it was the ICF, the IOC, the USOC or some combination of these parties) decided that paddlesport competition in the U.S. must instead be governed by an organization that was devoted solely to paddlesport competition as opposed to the broader mandate for ACA. This resulted in the creation of USACK, with its inevitable focus primarily on Olympic (or elite) team development. It may have resulted in better resources and support for elite atheletes, but I fear that its myopic view of competition may not be best in the long-run. However, even if the creation of USACK separate from the ACA was a mistake, it's not something that anyone is going to change.

As Trevor has noted, there needs to be a way that young people who are prospective atheletes get introduced to the sport. Better race architecture for artificial courses would be one helpful approach. Certainly the design and the management at ASCI is much more racer friendly.

However, there are only a handul of artifical courses in the U.S., and given their cost, that's not likely to change quickly. That means that to reach out to involve youth as prospective racers, there needs to be entry points dispersed more widely throughout the country than just Charlotte and ASCI. Training sites like the Feeder Canal, the Nantahala at NOC, Bellefonte, Falls Village, San Marcos TX, Golden CO, may not be the places where elite paddlers train anymore, but they can still serve as development sites for younger intermediate paddlers. We also need to ensure that the local and regional beginner and intermediate races don't wither or there will be nowhere for developing racers to get the experience necessary to handle water like Charlotte's.

I wish I had some easy answers for how we can better support these existing training sites, encourage new ones, and rebuild interest and participation in local and regional slalom races on natural rivers. Unfortunately, I don't, but IMO that's what will be necessary to encourage slalom development at the lower levels in order to have available a pool of dedicated younger racers who might be interested in making the committment to become elite through intensive training at Charlotte or other courses of similar difficulty.

John

[Craig Smerda]

Kaz, Brian H. & I are discussing this thread right now.

Brian has decided that a body cavity search per touch would be an actual penalty.

your thoughts?