Olmps

Canoes were used by European explorers in North America as early as 1615, when Samuel de Champlain, the founder of Québec, paddled his way through the Great Lakes.. It was not until the second half of the nineteenth century, however, that canoeing was adopted as a middle-class sport..Tribal gatherings aside, the earliest sprint races were held at the inaugural regatta of the English Canoe Club in 1866, organised by the redoubtable John MacGregor.. The New York Canoe Club was formed in 1871, followed by the American Canoe Association in 1880, and the Canadian equivalent ten years later..

Competitive slalom canoeing arrived relatively late on the scene..The first competition, held in Switzerland in 1932, was a sedate flat-water affair modelled on slalom skiing.. Before long, enthusiasts realised that white-water racing offered far more thrills and spills..The first world slalom championship was staged, again in Switzerland, in 1949..

The Chaplain of the Canoe

The man who first popularised canoeing as a sport was an eccentric

London barrister named John MacGregor (1825–92). His aquatic adventures started in early infancy,when he and his parents were rescued from a burning boat en route to India.The next instalment came at the age of twelve, when he stowed on board a lifeboat dispatched to aid a ship in distress near Belfast.

A champion marksman as a young man, MacGregor seems to have acquired a taste for canoeing during a trip to the USA and Canada in 1858, though a journey to Siberia may also have played a part. His inter - est remained dormant until a train accident robbed him of the ability to hold a rifle steady.

Then, in 1865, he commissioned a firm of shipbuilders in Lambeth to build the first of his seven double-ended canoes, all named Rob Roy.The boat was 15 feet long, 28 inches wide and 9 inches deep, with an open cockpit and a cedar deck covered with rubberised canvas. Despite these canoe-like features, it was propelled kayak-style, with a double-bladed paddle.

THE CHAPLAIN IN A SPOT OF BOTHER

Thus equipped, MacGregor launched the maiden voyage of the Rob Roy from Gravesend in Kent. He lit a cigar and, to the astonishment of local bargemen, paddled down theThames and into the English Channel, where he was joined by a school of porpoises. Inspired by this success, MacGregor had the canoe ferried to the continent, where he embarked on a tour of the waterways of Belgium,France,Switzerland and Germany. His account of the journey, A Thousand Miles in the Rob Roy Canoe, was a publishing phenomenon in 1866. Subsequent trips to the Baltic and the Middle East formed the basis of two more bestsellers.

MacGregor caused a sensation wherever he went, not least because he was 6ft 6in tall, and in the habit of paddling in a Norfolk jacket and straw boater. Ships would alter their courses to gawp at him. During his voyage down the River Jordan, a group of overexcited villagers plunged into the water, grabbed the Rob Roy and deposited it, with its occupant still in the cockpit, in the tent of the local sheikh. MacGregor was more than happy to play up to all the attention, performing magic tricks and sometimes lighting lengths of magnesium ribbon for the amusement of spectators. He did have a serious side though, notably a compulsion to distribute rabidly anti-Catholic religious tracts, hence his nickname ‘The Chaplain of the Canoe’.

Game On: Canoeing Basics

The first thing to get your head around is the dif-

ference between canoeing and kayaking.. Not only will this help you make sense of paddle-related goings on at the Games; it will endear you to practitioners of both arts, who get heartily sick of people confusing the two or using the terms interchangeably (a situation not helped by Olympic nomenclature, which brackets them together as ‘canoeing’)..

Canoes are propelled with single-ended paddles by people kneeling on one knee.. Kayaks are propelled with double-ended paddles by seated individuals..Whereas canoes are open in design, kayaks are ‘closed’ vessels, whose occupants seal themselves in by stretching skirt-like devices called spray decks over the rims of their cockpits..This was an essential precaution for the Inuit hunters who invented the craft, to prevent their boats filling up with icy Arctic water..They also invented an ingenious technique of righting themselves when they capsized, known as the Eskimo roll.

The second key distinction is between sprint events, which take place on calm water on straight courses divided into lanes, and slalom, which involve negotiating series of gates on decidedly non-straight stretches of turbulent ‘white’ water. .Whereas sprint canoeing and kayaking take the form of first-past-the-post races, slalom has a time trial format..

Sprint Canoeing

Men’s sprint races are held over 200m and 1000m (ca-

noes and kayaks), women’s over 200 and 500m (kayaks only)..There are no turns, just straight, lung-bursting charges to the finishing line.. It takes around 30 seconds for each kind of boat to complete a 200m course..

There are eight boats in each Olympic heat,each allocated a ninemetre wide lane..To help prevent false starts, the boats are aligned with their noses in small cones which automatically drop away at the start signal..Any boat guilty of two false starts is disqualified..

Throughout a race, competitors must endeavour to keep their boats within the four-metre-wide central areas.. If they deviate, they must move back towards the centre.. If one boat comes within five metres of another, it must take immediate remedial action or face the possibility of disqualification.. If it leaves its allocated lane, this punishment is automatic; capsizing also brings disqualification..

Equipment

Sprint canoes and kayaks are complex devices, typi-

cally made from a combination of Kevlar, carbon fibre, fibreglass and sometimes foam, bonded in layers by epoxy or polyester resin.. The emphasis in sprint canoeing is on speed rather than manoeuvrability and this is reflected in the design of the boats, which are longer and more streamlined than their slalom cousins, with very narrow beams..This makes them easy to capsize..

The boats in the sprint classes are delineated as K1, K2 and K4 (kayaks with maximum lengths of 520cm, 650cm and 1100cm), and C1, C2 and C4 (canoes with maximum lengths of 520cm, 650cm and 900cm).. Each also has a minimum weight..

Sprint kayaks are equipped with foot-controlled rudders under their hulls, which are operated by the sole or front paddler..This removes the need for corrective strokes, allowing all the paddling energy to be channelled into forward motion.. By contrast, sprint canoes are rudderless, which makes the use of corrective strokes essential..

Slalom Canoeing

The 2012 Olympic slalom course at Lee Valley has

(like four of the five courses in Olympic slalom history) been artificially constructed, dropping 5..5m along its 300-metre length, with a pump-powered water flow of 15 cubic metres per second..

The Course

All slalom courses must have the following features:

Length of 250 to 400 metres (generally navigable by a good single male canoeist in around 95 seconds)..

Equal ease/difficulty of navigation for right- and left-

handed canoe paddlers (kayakers, by definition, paddle ambidextrously)..

18 to 25 gates, six or seven of which must be negotiated uphill.. Green and white gates must be crossed with the boat heading downstream, red and white ones in the opposite direction..

Gates must consist of either one or two suspended poles between 1..2 and 4 metres apart.. In the case of a one-pole gate, the other pole is placed on the bank of the course to define the gate line (the imaginary line a competitor must cross)..The lower end of each pole must be about 20cm above the water line..

The distance between the last gate and the finish line must be

between 15 and 25 metres..

The ideal Olympic course will also have at least one gate combination which offers competitors several different options; constant changes of direction;and a gamut of daunting water features, including eddies, waves and rapids..

Scoring

Competitors get two runs in the heats, with their

better times determining progression. . Semi-finals and finals are single-run affairs, which leaves no margin for error..

Time penalties, which are added to the time taken to complete the course, are incurred for failing to negotiate gates correctly.. For a gate to be crossed successfully, it must be tackled from the right

SLOVAKIA’S HOCHSCHORNER TWINS Paddling TOWARDS A THIRD SUCCESSIVE Gold IN THE C2 SLALOM, 2008

direction and in the right running order (Gate 2 comes after Gate 1 and so on); the head of each competitor must cross the gate line at the same time as at least part of the boat; and neither of the gate posts must be touched by boat, paddle or body.. If either or both the poles are touched, a 2-second penalty is incurred..

If a gate is missed, a 50-second penalty is incurred. .A gate is deemed to be missed if any part of a competitor’s head breaks the gate line in the wrong direction; part of the head breaks the gate line without part of the boat doing the same simultaneously; a competitor intentionally pushes a gate pole to aid negotiation; a competitor’s head is underwater when the gate line is crossed (this isn’t unheard of ); or the gate is tackled out of sequence or omitted altogether..

In practice, missing a gate is fatal to hopes of a medal. .The same is true of capsizing, which is deemed to have occurred if a competitor has left his or her boat altogether..Turning a boat upside down does not in itself constitute capsizing.. If the occupant(s) manage(s) to execute an Eskimo roll, there is no penalty and the boat can continue..

Equipment

Like the sprint equivalents, slalom canoes and kayaks

are typically made from permutations of Kevlar, carbon fibre, fibreglass, foam and resin..At Olympic level, they are usually tailor-made for the course they will be tackling..They are, however, invariably designed with maximum manoeuvrability in mind, which comes at the expense of stability..

The difference between slalom kayaks and canoes is less obvious than in sprint racing, as both are decked and equipped with cockpits. .The canoeists, however, must still kneel rather than sit. . Rudders are not permitted on either kind of boat..

The weight and length stipulations for Olympic slalom boats are delineated in three classes: K1, C1 and C2 (kayak/canoes with minimum lenghts of 3..5m, 3..5m and 4..1m; minimum widths and weights are also stipulated)..

Love and Losers among the Rapids

The women’s kayak slalom at the 1992 Barcelona Games was enlivened by the (non-)performance of Costa Rica’s Gilda Montenegro, who accumulated an impressive 470 penalty points on her first run. She spent most of her next attempt upside down, breaking her helmet as her head banged along the bottom of the course. It transpired that she had never even trained for the event until a month before the Games. Belatedly realising that his country had one more canoeing berth at Barcelona than he had thought, Costa Rican coach Rafael Gallo had decided to offer the place to the nice lady who had worked for him

as a raft guide.

Montenegro was so traumatised by the experience that she wouldn’t go near a kayak for eighteen months. She was made of stern stuff, however, and reappeared at Atlanta determined to complete the course without missing a gate. She achieved her ambition on her second run, finishing 28th of 30 competitors. Her gutsy attitude so impressed Oliver Fix, the German winner of the men’s single slalom at Atlanta, that the couple ended up married.

Canoe slalom is far less neat than the more familiar

ski version: unlike snow, water doesn’t stay put, and in canoeing some of the gates must be negotiated backwards, i. e. . . with the canoeist heading uphill..When this involves turning around into a waterfall, nerves of steel are required..

In slalom canoeing, watch how the competitors use different kinds of stroke to manoeuvre their craft.. Long wide sweep strokes are used to turn around, quick short strokes to move forward and push strokes to move backwards..

Canoeing Goes to the Olympics

Sprint canoeing appeared as a demonstration sport at

the 1924 Games in Paris, with races featuring both canoes and kayaks..The medals were divided between the USA and Canada, scarcely surprisingly as all the competitors belonged to either the Canadian Canoe Association or the Washington Canoe Club..

When canoeing became a full medal sport at Berlin in 1936, Austria and Germany won the majority of the medals, setting a pattern of Central and Eastern European success that has continued ever since. .Women joined the party at the London Games in 1948..

Two individuals stand out in the history of Olympic sprint canoeing.. Sweden’s Gert Fredriksson accumulated six men’s kayak gold medals between 1948 and 1960, repeatedly devastating his opponents with sprint finishes at both 1000m and the now discontinued marathon distance of 10km.. Even he, however, must bow to the great Birgit Fischer, who won a staggering eight sprint kayaking golds between 1980 and 2004, three for the GDR and five for the reunited Germany.. Just as effective in team events as singles, she became both the youngest and oldest Olympic canoeing champion at the ages of 18 and 42 respectively.. Had East Germany not boycotted the 1984 Games, her tally would have been even more impressive..

Various sprint events have fallen by the wayside in the course of Olympic history, including the men’s 10km, which was never much of a sprint in the first place, and men’s 500m races, which are being replaced by 200m equivalents at the London Games..

Slalom canoeing made its debut at the Munich Games of 1972. .The West Germans spent 17m deutschmarks on the construction of an artificial slalom course at Augsburg, only to find that the East Germans had built an exact replica in Zwickau..The GDR duly won all four slalom medals..

Largely as a result of the expense involved in building consistent and spectator-friendly artificial courses, slalom was absent from the next four Olympics, but it reappeared at Barcelona and has been a permanent fixture ever since..