Re: [Paddlewise] What's Wrong with Kayaking

On Thu, Dec 23, 2004 at 07:43:48AM -0600, James wrote:
> Now the slalom races are much, much shorter and, starting this coming
> season, the boats will be, too.  But when I started slalom racing there
> were a lot of old timers complaining about the dropping of the "free"
> gate and reducing the penalty for a missed gate from 100 seconds to
> "only" 50.  So I guess change is always stressful.

I'm not averse to change.  As of next month, I'll hit 25 years on
the Internet (and the ARPAnet before that): "change" is pretty much
my life, to the point where it's now routine for something to be
brand-new one year, a "best practice" the next, and truly stupid
a couple of years later.  I'm well-known among my peers for being
the one who frequently advocates change at a far faster rate than
any of them would.

But I have a serious problem with "change for the sake of change"
or "change without discussion and consent" or "change which primarily
benefits the elite" or "change which drives people out of the sport"

And that is exactly what has happened to slalom worldwide and in
the US over the past decade-plus: the golden opportunity that was
presented with the return of it to the Olympic Games in 1992, the
hosting of the Olympic event here in the US in '96, and the wonderful
US performances in both those Games...all have been thrown away.

	[ BTW: I was there at the Ocoee too.  And despite my poor
	memory for names, I could swear I spent a day gate-judging
	with you at the Nationals on the Deerfield in 1993, and maybe
	bumped into you again when I was racing at the Nationals in 
	Wausau in 1997?  Or else I'm just having a senior moment. ;-) ]

	[ And those "wonderful US performances" include Scott Shipley's
	generosity in giving his boat to Samir Karabasic (Bosnia) who
	made it to the Games after being airlifted out of that war-torn
	country, but whose own kayak was destroyed by the Ocoee in practice.
	Some people thought Scott's performance in the competition was
	"disappointing" because he didn't wind up with a medal: I thought
	it was magnificent. ]

Change was necessary, all right: for one thing, the 19th-century policy
of the ICF with respect to female competitors should have been changed
many years ago, as that policy is a world-wide disgrace to the sport:
women are not permitted to compete in C-boats.  So while there are C-1
and C-2 classes for men, there are none for women.  And of course there
is no C-2 mixed class, which means that my partner and I -- no matter
how good we ever manage to get -- are banned from competing.  Forever.

(Similar policies exist in other disciplines besides slalom: sprint,
wildwater, marathon, etc. are all marred by them, thanks to the ICF.)

This is a vicious policy of gender discrimination that has no place in
*any* sport, yet it persists because those who could change it in a single
day -- with the stroke of a pen -- lack the ethics and courage to do so.
How pitiful.  How wrong.

And change was necessary here in the US, too, as less than a thousand
athletes actually participate in the sport, and only a few hundred of
those do more than one race a year: clearly, something should have changed
in order to attract many more people to the sport, and it should have
been done right after Jacobi/Strausbaugh won gold in Barcelona (and let
me not overlook Dana Chladek's bronze there and silver in Atlanta).

But this is not kind of the change that happened.  The change that
happened was the switch from better-of-two runs to combined score --
a move that's driven more people out of the sport than anything else.
(I know: I got a lot of them into it and they've told me in no uncertain
times why they've left.  They're done.  And they've taken their money
and their time, two scarce commodities, with them.)

And now we have this silly change in boat lengths -- as if somehow,
magically, that will bring more people into the sport.  Never mind that
most people who paddle whitewater seriously already have a bunch of boats,
and routinely buy/sell/trade them to suit their interests and needs.
Heck, I had 7 at one point, and that's hardly unusual.

And besides, the need to buy a race-legal boat (for those few races
that don't have classes for non-race boats) has NEVER, in all my years
of racing, ever stopped a single person from participating in any race.
Especially since it's quite routine for people to lend/borrow boats:
I've been to races where my boats took 2-3 times as many trips down the
course as I did.

Oh, change is needed all right: *lots* of change.  But rubber-stamping
whatever change-for-the-sake-of-change is handed down from the idiots at
the ICF isn't it.  And until that's recognized, slalom (and wildwater, and
sprint, and marathon, and...) will continue to decline.  Oh, there will be
some kids that get into it here and there, sure; but most of the _adults_,
the ones whose participation is desperately needed as organizers and
drivers and coaches and volunteers and financial supporters?  They're
staying away in droves.  All you have to do is look at, oh, the competitor
list for, say, the 1999 Nationals -- a mere five years ago -- and then
see how many of the people over 30 are still involved in the sport in
any role at all.

---Rsk
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