FIBArk Event Coverage
By Christopher Wing • Jun 17th, 2009 • Category: Feature Story, Festival Coverage, WK Pro Event Coverage
The 61st Annual FIBArK (First In Boating the Arkansas) Festival has already kicked off here in Salida, CO with live musics, movie premiers and feverish practicing from kayakers of all disciplines. Salida plays host this year to the USA Wildwater National Championships as well as a dozen other kayaking events.
Tomorrow starts the competition with Wildwater sprints and the Pine Creek Boater X which puts out its fair share of carnage in the infamous Pine Creek Rapid where a towering hole awaits racers mid-course. For those that have the skill to negotiate the course it should be a fairly uneventful race, however, as it usually does the squirrelly water upstream of the hole sends racers off course and plummeting into the guts of the hole.
I will have the HD camera courtesy of Rapid Transit Video set close to the hole to capture the grimmace of racers as they approach and hopefully smash into the turbulent whitewater. Competition footage will be posted during the weekend while other events will be broadcasted live via the web on WKTV. We will be covering the Prelims for all of the freestyle events on Friday starting at 2:00 PM EST. Event Coverage continues the next day with the Hooligan Race at 7:30 PM EST shortly followed by the freestyle finals under the lights in the famous Salida Hole.
The Hooligan Race is a crowd favorite as participants are encourage to wear extremely ridiculous costumes while paddling barely floatable homemade crafts down the river through the play hole. The freestyle, being the last major Colorado competition is anyone’s game as many of the favorites over the years have been being beat consistently all season long.
Thursday – Pine Creek Boater X, video to follow this weekend during broadcasts
Friday – Freestyle Prelims, live broadcast starts at 2:00 PM EST
Saturday – Hooligan Race and Freestyle Finals, live broadcast starts at 7:30 PM EST
Christopher Wing is I currently work at the US National Whitewater Center in Charlotte, NC as an Instructor Trainer. The 2008 season is my most ambitious to date as I pursue becoming a professional athlete while I expand my programming horizons in professional level instruction.
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