World Kayak Event Coverage

So far I have got to say we have been really lucky! The local weather has been hit and miss but on the evenings of our events the rain gods have smiled upon us:)

Valleyfield, Quebec: Wednesday June 17th – 6:30 PM – Riviere St-Charles.

World Kayak and CReW present another Slalom Survivor event: “Down River Madness part 2″.

Registration bean at 6:30 (a bit later than planned but construction on the Mon Seigneur Langlois bridge (into Valleyfield) slowed things down a bit. But by 7: we had 12 paddlers ready to go! The local slalom club was training kids so we even got a couple slalom boats into the mix. Way cool.

The course started above “bob”. The competitors had 3 must make eddies and 7 gates until the first of 2 obstacles. The first obstacle is a person with a ball. Catch the ball and throw it back in the persons hands and you are on you way. (The ease of the obstacle depends on who is holding the ball at the eddy..Oo.. If you were lucky it was my Daughter Emily but if he gods did not smile on you it was Aime-Jean….) From their it is a ferry and drop into the eddy at mini wave, ferry across mini wave then onto the last obstacle to stop the clock. This time we decided to appeal to the little kids and challenge the adults to find their inner child…. To stop the clock each paddler must get to a small bottle in the last eddy, open it, blow 2 bubbles (you guessed it… it is a bottle of bubbles and the bottle is pink… Mathiew asked if there was another color ) close the bottle and put it on the dock. The clock stops when the bottle is back on the dock. (sorry we did not get a picture of this.. it was a hoot!)
Sounds too easy?
We also award so many seconds off the time for those who want to try a hand roll – try and succeed = -5 seconds and try and fail = -2 seconds.

The first start was at 7:22 and the fun continued till the the last paddler finished up.

We had a variety of paddlers from Jean-Phillipe who just started paddling to our regulars like Cheryl and Zachary.

Here are the results: (scores are in time and some folks asked me to list the boat type and groups)

1. Maxime Leboeuf           (Cadet Slalom)          1:40
2. Aurelie Rondeau           (Cadet Slalom)          1:40
3. Aime-Jean Lavigne       (Men Play boat)         1:59
4. sylvie Lebel                  (Women Play boat)    2:00
5. Dany Ross                    (Men Creek)              2:11
6. Julie Aubin                   (Women Creek)         2:15
7. Robert Zwanenburg      (Men Play boat)        2:16
8. Zachary Zwanenburg    (Cadet Play boat)      2:18
9. Cheryl McGregor          (Women Play boat)    2:22
10. Emily Zwanenburg        (Cadet play boat)      2:40
11. Martin Naud                 (Men Play boat)         2:46
12. Jennifer Tytula              (Women Play boat)    2:52
13. Jean-Philippe Merrette  (Men Play boat)         2:55

Congrats go to Jean-Philippe, Martin Naud, Dany Ross and Jennifer Tytula for making a huge effort and having fun with us on their first timed race!

I was really happy to see the young slalom paddlers come out and play. Hopefully they will encourage some of their fellow club and team members to challenge us for the July 17th survivor!

When it was all over we got the group together for and announce the standings and also let them go with some sweet gifts from our sponsors. Julie did sweet little jig in her new Crocs!

Everyone who came this time said they will be back in July to take another go at it! How cool is that. Lots of smiles, and some awesome paddling by everyone.

Thanks to everyone for coming out and thank-you World Kayak and all the sponsors for making this possible.

Next Slalom Survivor: July 17th

Next Throwdown: July 25th
(For folks who want to come out to the throwdown – you can camp in my  backyard if you are coming from out of town.)

See you on the river,

Robert Zwanenburg
www.cornwallwhitewater.com