On Mon, Sep 25, 2000 at 04:53:58PM +0000, Joe Flannery wrote: > I think that in the Olympics they should have a real course and not a man > made course for the kayaking. Rich Kulawiec wrote That'd be great, but coming up with one which is (a) near enough to the main venue for the Games (b) of sufficient difficulty but (c) without life-threatening hazards while (d) having adequate infrastructure (roads, parking, spectator seating, etc.) and (e) controllable flow is a tough task. In 1996, whitewater slalom was held on the Ocoee, a couple of hours from Atlanta -- and it worked (I was there) with the only real problem being the gouging of spectators by food/drink vendors. But not every site is so lucky, and in the case of Sydney, they responded by building a course that is considered to be one of the premier sites in the world. There is also another problem. Australia is one of the driest continents on the planet and finding a place with enough water at the right time of year would be very difficult if not impossible. I am not a white water paddler but could guess that you could take any one of the major white water rivers in America and it would have more water going down than all of our WW rivers put together. I have some friends who are white water paddlers and they often have to wait weeks (sometimes months) for rain to enable them to go WW in their favourite spots. I would not want all of the spectators going to the few nice spots there are for paddling it couldn't cope with the numbers without huge environmental damage. PLus what about all the other sports on artifical surfaces Running tracks Swimming pools Velodromes Non grass tennis courts etc etc David Whyte Australia *************************************************************************** PaddleWise Paddling Mailing List - All postings copyright the author and not to be reproduced/forwarded outside PaddleWise without author's permission Submissions: PaddleWise_at_PaddleWise.net Subscriptions: PaddleWise-request_at_PaddleWise.net Website: http://www.paddlewise.net/ ***************************************************************************Received on Mon Sep 25 2000 - 18:19:53 PDT
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