Credit River Slalom Race
Sunday, March 24, 2002
route:
length: 1.0km, 1 day
difficulty: novice
leader: Streetsville Kinsmen
organizer: OWWA
participants: Caroline Owen, Chris Mack, Keith Nunn, Nicole Mack, Fred Lum, Mike Yee, Keith Watson, countless others
offsite report: http://kapn.pointclark.net/gallery/creditrace2002
OR try the Wayback Machine
report:
VVs Cline, Chris (Mack/Canoe), Nicole and I all paddled in the Credit River Slalom Race today. It was a great day of racing, hanging out and talking paddling with others of the paddling community. Other VVs making an appearance, but not racing, were Michael Sims and Michel Neray. There were 15 solo open boats, two decked, and 2 tandem open boats. Other known paddlers are too numerous to mention, but I'll identify those who appear in photos when I get them back and post them later this week.
VVCC Results: Cline was 2nd in a field of 6, Nicole was first in a field of 2, Chris was 8th and I was 6th in a field of eleven. I should add however, that Chris would have taken 5th if he hadn't confused gate 8.
Chris adds: Yeah I zigged when I should have zagged at gate 8 (an offset gate) and I did it the very same on my second run, I really thought that was the way to go!!
Oh well, I had a great time with 175 seconds beating out Nicole by .5 seconds... oh yeah. Maybe next year they will have a Superfly class, there were 2 Superfly and one Spanishfly there this year.
The run itself was pretty decent with water being just high enough. The weather was a bit cold, but much better than last year and the wind wasn't bad.
Because the water was a bit lower than last year the course was a bit easier: basically a zig-zag, with a few reverse (upstream) gates. The confusing part was gates 7 and 8 which were split and caused more than a few folk confusion about how to deal with them.
It was a great event and very beginner friendly. Hopefully it'll be a bit warmer next year and a few more VVs will come out. It's not a high competion event unless you really want it to be, it's mostly just a great personal challenge. Cline's sweetie, Sandy, came out and paddled after doing solo just a few weeks! Way to go Sandy!
Update: Some photos at http://kapn.pointclark.net/gallery/creditrace2002/. These are from Cline's digital camera. Mine were a disaster. I still haven't figured out why. |
