whitewater kayak
GMA: ‘Daredevil Kayaker Conquers Massive Waterfall’
09.28.2011 // 0 Comments
Kayaker Jesse Coombs and photographer Lucas Gilman teamed up in March 2011 to run, and document, Cooombs’ drop of Oregon’s foreboding, 96-foot Aibiqua Falls. On Saturday, the duo appeared as guests on Good Morning America to discuss the, um, “daredevil drop.” It’s worth another look.
Riders on the Storm
09.26.2011 // 0 Comments
Despite hurricane-related challenges, World Championships of Surf Kayaking on tap for Outer Banks
Letter from Stookesberry
09.19.2011 // 0 Comments
Finally, after two weeks of extended meetings and film showings in Brazil, the real objective of our trip to Brazil is directly infront of us. I know what you must be thinking and, no, Carnival is still five months out. For Chris Korbulic, Pedro Oliva and I, the real point of our annual reunion in Brazil has always been based on the next big river descent.
Updated: Video – Yellow Creek, 3rd Descent
09.13.2011 // 1 Comment
f the Internet is one huge smörgåsbord of people’s lives, plus Yahoo! celeb news and other super important stuff, then I suppose it’s OK to just post this little video here. Sure, I can’t tell you much about it, like where Yellow Creek is (my best guess is California). But it’s a tasty dish amid said smörgåsbord ala mundane…
26th annual Canoe & Kayak Industry Awards Announced
09.13.2011 // 2 Comments
The mood was electric and the music acoustic at the 2011 Paddlesports Industry Party in Salt Lake City on Aug. 5. Athletes, legends and industry employees flooded the venue for free food, beer, networking and the 26th annual Canoe & Kayak Industry Awards.
Bratislava Farewell
09.12.2011 // 1 Comment
Yesterday the Worlds ended. I’m talking about the 2011 Canoe Slalom World Championships, of course, not the end of everything. (That’s in 2012.) Riding in cars or buses or airplanes back to their homelands today, slalom athletes and coaches are thinking about this year’s racing season, and planning the next.
Bratislava #8
09.11.2011 // 0 Comments
France’s Denis Gargaud-Chanut and Fabien Lefevre, the silver medalists in Saturday’s C-2 event, made slalom history Sunday by medaling again in their two different singles classes. Lefevre claimed the Bronze Medal in Men’s Kayak, and—in the biggest surprise of these World Championships—Gargaud-Chanut is the 2011 World Champion in C-1 Men.
Bratislava #7
09.11.2011 // 0 Comments
“Why is this French C-2 team paddling on the same side?” I asked in the caption to my photo in Bratislava #3. Now I know that my guess was wrong: They weren’t “just hacking around.” In the C-2 final Saturday, that same French team—who I discovered is the legendary Fabian Lefevre and his partner Denis Gargaud-Chanut—was the last boat down the course…
Bratislava #6
09.09.2011 // 0 Comments
It was a disappointing morning for the U.S. paddlers, including for my sentimental favorite, the McEwan and Eichfeld team. The drama of qualifying heats lies not in the placings within the top ten, but “on the bubble”—those paddlers who are just inside or just outside the cutoff.
Extreme Makeover, River Edition
09.09.2011 // 0 Comments
Washington’s Elwha River, currently diverted by two dammed reservoirs and twenty-four million cubic yards of sediment, is being restored to its original free-flowing form.
Bratislava #5
09.08.2011 // 1 Comment
t wasn’t exactly a quiet day at the course today, but the sound was not the roar of the crowd, rather the roar of the event-canceling wind. What’s a honed and hungry racer to do?
Bratislava #4
09.08.2011 // 0 Comments
Was I nervous this morning? Nah. It was just everyday forgetfulness that made me fail to put the battery back into my camera. And if I was completely exhausted after the the first C-2 heat, well, blame jet lag. It had nothing to do with watching my son race in his first World Championships.
Bratislava Chronicles #3
09.06.2011 // 3 Comments
BRATISLAVA, Slovakia — The official Opening Ceremonies of the 2011 Canoe Slalom World Championships did not begin until 7 p.m. Tuesday local time, so during the day there was training as usual on the course. With boat and gear inspection taking place off to one side, it was a good chance for me to meet new people as they stood in line.
Bratislava Chronicles #2
09.06.2011 // 0 Comments
I’m getting the feeling that the 2011 Canoe Slalom World Championships has an inferiority complex. Today the home page for the World Championships features a photo of Michel Martikan with the caption, “Road to London Adds Extra Excitement to Canoe Slalom World Championships.”
Setting the Stage in Bratislava
09.05.2011 // 3 Comments
By Jamie McEwan Here I am—Bratislava, Slovakia! Site of the 2011 Canoe Slalom World Championships! Ouch, I’ve done it already: I can’t even write two sentences (one a fragment) about the Worlds without stumbling over Slalom’s Eurocentrism. Here they don’t say “Canoe and Kayak Slalom” because for Europeans, “canoe” is the generic word for canoes [...]
Game Changer
09.02.2011 // 0 Comments
On this Sunday afternoon in early May, the Petite Bostonnais River is anything but small. As 600 cfs barrels down the narrow granite gauntlet, a cross-section of the world’s top paddlers stare into the crux of the racecourse: a weir-hole entrance to a chaotic and continuous 60-foot slide with serious face-shredding potential—all of it feeding into an enormous re-circulating hole. Avoiding that sucking man-trap meant threading a seemingly impossible line to the right after more than a minute of all-out paddling through a succession of multi-tiered Class V drops.
Bradt’s Back
09.01.2011 // 8 Comments
In March, Tyler Bradt crushed his L1 vertebrae after landing flat off of Oregon’s 100-foot Abiqua Falls. Three days shy of the five-month anniversary of that accident, on Aug. 17, Bradt—the 25-year-old reigning waterfall-drop world record holder, at 189 feet—was back, for a run down a legendary line, “The Box.”
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