Forget everything you think you know about Olympic canoe and kayak events. These are not the leisurely paddles you recall from that summer you spent at the lake. You probably weren’t zipping across the water at better than 15 mph, or trying to keep upright in white water.
In many ways, the sport has remained largely the same since its earliest days, but sleek, lightweight racing boats and advanced technology that helps paddlers maximize performance have elevated the excitement, making the events we’ll see at the 2012 Summer Games better than ever.
“They really fly,” said Alan Anderson, director of the Gig Harbor Canoe and Kayak Club. “They could pull a water skier.”
First, a quick word on canoes and kayaks. The biggest difference is canoers kneel on one knee and use a single-bladed paddle. Kayakers are seated and use a paddle with blades at each end. Kayaks also have a foot-operated rudder, while canoes have no rudder at all.
Now then. About the events.
Austin Warren, 15, from Gig Harbor, WA, sprints in the harbor during a training session. Photo: Matt Mills McKnight/WiredSprint
In sprint canoe and kayak, boats race head-to-head in drag races over 200, 500 or 1,000 meters. They race in a one person, two person and four person canoes and kayaks or in a four person 200-meter each relay. Although there was a canoe competition at the first modern Olympiad in 1869, sprint canoe didn’t became a full medal event until the 1936 Summer Games in Berlin.
Once upon a time, the boats were mahogany. That began changing in the 1980s with the adoption of lightweight and durable materials fiberglass and plastic. These days they’re carbon fiber. The rules state one-person up to 5.2 meters in length must weigh 12 kilograms; a four-seater can be as long as 9 meters and weigh 30 kilos. The vessels have grown increasingly narrow over the years to more easily slice the water. That’s made them trickier to keep stable, though, making the sport more challenging. Athletes and their coaches use ballast to achieve the minimum weight and maximize maneuverability.
Slalom
Although competitive whitewater slalom got its start in the 1930s, it didn’t become an Olympic event until the 1972 Summer Games in Munich. It didn’t last long, though, as the IOC eliminated it later that year. It returned in 1992 when the IOC began to expand the Games. Racers race in single or double canoes, or one-person kayaks, through as many as 25 gates on a 300-meter whitewater course. While the sprint events are somewhat traditional in the boats and training, slalom has become high-tech in every regard, from the design of the boats and race courses to the training involved at the highest level of the sport.
Start with the boats. They were for many years canvas stretched over wood frames. That was replaced with fiberglass and nylon in the 1960s and 1970s, but they were heavy boats that could top 65 pounds. As time passed, boatmakers adopted composites like Kevlar and carbon fiber, making ever-lighter boats. By the 1980s, American competitors in particular were using kevlar composite boats 6 or 7 pounds lighter than those others were using. The rules have since been changed and boats must weigh a minimum of 9 kilograms, 10 kilograms and 15 kilograms for kayak singles, canoe singles and canoe doubles, respectively, to even the economic, and competitive, playing field. Like the sprinters, slalomers just strategically place weights in their boats to reach the minimum weight and maximize maneuverability.
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Kobe Was Hoop Dreaming Saying His Team Beats Dream TeamOther than material changes, the boats have recently gotten shorter by a half a meter for easier navigation. The courses have shrunk too, and these days it will take a paddler about 90 seconds to complete the course. Shorter boats means smaller channels (race courses), making the sport trickier, said Scott Shipley, a three-time Olympian, three-time world champion and top-ranked slalom paddler.
“It’s a very dynamic, very fast sport, and much more so now,” he said. “We have to design to that new standard. It’s evolving as we speak. Athletes are getting better at paddling these short boats, and whitewater needs to adapt with them.”
Artificial courses are popping up worldwide, including the one being used in London this summer, the Lee Valley White Water Centre, about 30 kilomaters north of the Olympic Park, part of THe Lee Valley Regional Park. It was designed and constructed by Shipley’s company, S2ODesign and Engineering.
The Olympic Delivery Authority — the folks responsible for developing and building Olympic venues — gave Shipley’s team a concept. The design requirements state the channel be an average of 1.4 meters deep, though it can vary from 40 cm to 2 meters, and a 5.5-meter drop. Once they designed a course that met those parameters, S20Design created an obstacle system in which all the boulders in the channel can be easily moved to change the behavior of the course and make the water rougher or smoother. The system, called Rapid Blocs, uses stackable blocks on rails.
Technology is playing an ever-bigger role in training, too, as athletes try to shave every hundredth of a second from their time.
Paddlers spend a lot of time on the water, of course, and they use GPS and data tracking to monitor their speed, distance, heart rate and other metrics. Of course, they also hit the gym. A lot. There you’ll find them pumping iron and using sophisticated rowing machines like the SpeedStroke. Coaches generally use stoke counting watches to keep an eye on stroke rates and speed to help an athlete achieve maximum efficiency.
Video analysis has become vital, both during training and in competition. Go to any top-level competition and you’ll see a video tent for every team, each with live streams of the action on the course. When a paddler completes his or her run, they and their coaches can parse every second to see what went right, what went wrong and what to do for the next run.
“The cameras capture video of the lines you take in the water, said Kim Pop, a USOC sports technologist who works with the canoe kayak slalom team. “The lines determine how fast they are going to go, but not only can paddlers see their own performance, it is compared side be side with their competition, so they can see who has lost and gained time.”
