The following appeared in the July/August, 1996 issue of American Whitewater,

courtesy of Elmore Holmes.
 

An icy wind descends from Lake Michigan and penetrates my geriatric late-twentysomething bones, leaving me incredulous that spring is nearly a month old. It actually was hot yesterday when I left my Memphis home. Here, some 8 degrees (latitude, that is) due north, a nearby bank clock issues a 35-degree report that betrays the formidable wind chill.

My chin buried within the collar of my fleece jacket, I gaze upon the freshly constructed slalom course on the East Race Waterway, distant-second to Notre Dame football among the attractions that put the shabby Rust Belt city of South Bend, Indiana, on the map.

The occasion is the North Olympic Trials Qualifier, one of four opportunities for slalomists to earn a starting time at the U.S. Olympic Team Trials, a month from now on the Ocoee River in Tennessee. The first opportunity was the South Qualifier on North Carolina's Nantahala River, held two weeks ago. This weekend will see qualifiers for the North, here at South Bend, and the West, on the Middle Fork of the Snoqualmie River near Seattle. The drama will conclude two weeks from now with the East Qualifier on the Farmington River in Connecticut.

A berth in the Trials is the Big Prize that has led dozens of racers to these regional qualifiers.

And, in all likelihood, a spot at Trials will be the only prize; for when the Olympic Games finally get underway in late July, the men and women who had advanced to the Trials from these qualifying races will almost certainly be at home watching on television.

The composition of the 1996 U.S. Olympic Team is all but a foregone conclusion, as each boat class contains precious few athletes who are truly Olympic material. The two C-1 spots will be filled by some combination of Adam Clawson, Davey Hearn, Joe Jacobi, Jon Lugbill; the two K-1 spots by Eric Giddens, Eric Jackson, Scott Shipley, Richie Weiss. In K-1W, Dana Chladek, Jana Freeburn, Cathy Hearn, and Kara Weld will square off for spots on the team. The brother tandem of Fritz and Lecky Haller figure to claim whatever C-2 berth materializes, barring a mild upset by Barry Kennon/David Hepp or Matt Taylor/Steve Isenburg.

The South and North and West and East qualifying races are of no great concern to these people. These stars, along with a handful of their high-performing peers, are guaranteed a Trials berth by virtue of their membership in the "A" level of rankings, which the national federation calculates each year using some bizarre algorithm that even my mathematical mind cannot quite comprehend. Below the elite "A-ranked" boaters are the B-, C-, D-, and unranked racers, who must paddle their way into the Trials via the four qualifying races.

Most of the A-ranked paddlers are currently living in the Ocoee region, training on the river daily in preparation for the upcoming Trials and Games. Many of them, along with quite a few members of foreign national teams, were on hand for the first qualifier on the nearby Nantahala, using the race as a tune-up. But here at South Bend, the field consists of unproven athletes. A few junior (under 18) racers with bright futures in the sport are present--Scott McCleskey and Ryan Bahn in C-1, Josh Russell and Scott Parsons in K-1, Megan Stalheim and Amy Brown in K-1W, the C-2 team of Chris Ennis and John Grumbine; but the rest of the entrants are perennial rank-and-file types like me, vying for their fifteen nanoseconds of fame.

"If I had made the Team Trials at the Nantahala, I wouldn't have come up here," I tell K-1 racer Tom Piccirilli.

"I believe that's the understatement of the weekend," Tom replies. This frigid weekend in South Bend is a sort of Slalom Purgatory.
 
"I can't believe some of these wimps," says Bobby Hartridge, who stands next to me on the bank of the canal. Bobby is a South Carolina kayaker better known for his steep-creek conquests but now rising in the K-1 slalom ranks. At this moment he is annoyed by the pleading of several racers to simplify some of the tougher moves: "What's the point of having a race if any slob can run the course?" Bobby is blessed with remarkable perspective.

But the course does in fact have several diabolically tough sections. Gates 8 through 11 comprise a sequence of downstream offsets in the first section of fast water, requiring the paddler to punch a strong eddy on river right and then execute an extremely tight left-right-left move. Gate 16, a downstream, also hangs above a large eddy, and sends the paddler into a must-make surf from 17 to 18.

Bobby's perspective will serve me well these days, for my slalom season has unfolded not at all the way I had hoped. Back home, a couple hundred miles from the nearest whitewater, I work full-time as a high school mathematics teacher and track coach, and struggle to schedule my training around my real-world obligations. I manage some sprints and stroke drills on the Mississippi River and some moving-water gate work on its muddy Wolf River tributary, but this alone will not deliver slalom success. Having studied untold miles of video of the great canoeists, I see that while my forward stroke is up to the task and my leans and pivots have come a long way, I am outclassed by these men in certain subtleties which are harder to measure: Hull kinesthetics. Boat placement. Edge control. "Elite" balance. The amphibious savvy and intuition that only hours on the water each day can develop.

But inadequate training is only partly accountable for my problems this season. The truth is that my performance is not much, if at all, worse than it was last season. My frustration has resulted more from an unreasonable rise in my expectations. Bobby, for instance, is able to shrug his shoulders and say, "Hey, it's only my third year of racing. If I don't go to Trials now, I will later on." My attitude is more, "I've been doing this three years now. When am I going to get good?"
 
The duties of the demonstration run, for which Bobby and Tom and I and a number of other racers have been waiting this dreary evening, have been assigned to Richard Dressen, a kayaker who just missed an "A" ranking last year but claimed his Trials berth on the Nantahala two weeks ago. Most of our predictions regarding the course's difficult moves are borne out by Dressen's run.

Having seen all I need to see, I walk out to my car and set my course for the Super 8 Motel on the north side of town. I give the '92 Corolla a reassuring pat on the dash, whispering a promise that she will be put to bed shortly. In three and a half years the vehicle has delivered me through 30 states and over 73,000 miles, the last 600 of which have passed since yesterday afternoon. Desperate for some sleep of my own, I wonder how long I can go on like this.

I pull into the Super 8 parking lot and bring the Corolla to rest alongside several other vehicles bearing boats. Across the street at the Motel 6 are more boats with cars strapped beneath them, their owners inside relishing all the luxuries of $28.99 per night. The U.S. Olympic Committee doesn't cough up any funds for grunts like us.
 
By morning the sun has emerged and the air temperature has risen, but the wind remains fierce. I roll out of bed after a glorious nine-hour slumber, check out of the room, and return to East Race. I arrive to find the double canoe class just underway, and the profane, exasperated screams that waft up from below the Colfax Avenue bridge tell me that Bob Bofinger and Jack Dawson must be on the course.

Their precarious relationship notwithstanding, Bofinger and Dawson are one of the more competent non-U.S.-Team C-2s around. They weave mostly-clean through the tough 8-through-11 sequence, and their Trials berth seems imminent. The outlook quickly sours, however, when they have to paddle back up after missing #18 and take a 50-second penalty on #24.

A short time later the women are up, and they sound off with a few expletives of their own as the course claims its first female victims. But, in keeping with the international rules of slalom, the racers descend in reverse order of national rank, so that gradually the moves become crisper, the runs cleaner.

When the morning session ends, the Olympic Trials field is five boats larger. The Criscione brothers, John and Joe, and Ennis/Grumbine have capitalized on the mistakes of Bofinger/Dawson to qualify in C-2. And Joanne Bogner, Becky Brown, and Anne Mitchell have secured their trip to Ducktown as K-1W competitors.
 
Shielded from the chill by polypro and neoprene, I carry my trusty Fanatic C-1 to the putin and find Scott McCleskey on the dock, fingering a slab of iron fastened inside the bottom of his boat with Bondo. "My boat didn't make weight. Had to go to a machine shop for this thing last night," he explains.

We paddle out onto the flatwater of the St. Joseph River, which has been dammed to allow for the steepened gradient of the Waterway. "I was unnerved as hell by all the studs there," Scott says, referring to the first qualifier on the Nantahala. "It's hard to paddle well when you feel like you're the suckiest guy in the race."

"Yeah," I agree. "Sometimes I have to go do some mickeymouse race just to recover some self-esteem."

Paddling off for some pre-race quiet time, Scott murmurs, "Self-esteem is a good thing."

Other C-boaters have commenced their warmup on the St. Joseph, and I recognize faces from competitions past. Todd Murdock, whose running times are always faster than mine but whose numerous penalties sometimes enable me to beat him, hopes that his Olympic Festival experience will carry him into the Trials. A fit frame belies the somewhat advanced age of Andy Padyk, a late-bloomer on the slalom circuit. The Criscione brothers are trying to add a second boat class to their activities on the Ocoee next month. No A-ranked C-1s are present, but Scott McCleskey, Ryan Bahn, Jesse Gillis, and Andrew Bell, reliable B-rankers all, take on the role of favorites.

Sloppy is the word for my practice run, but I am unconcerned, for every racer knows it's bad luck to have a great practice run. I return to the warmup area with my synapses firing furiously in analysis of my mistakes. I am fortunate enough to have run track and cross country in high school for a coach who understood the importance of visualization as a preparation tool for competition.

In front of me is the starting wand, and the starter has informed me that I start in thirty seconds. In silence, I stare downstream at those who have started before me, trying to glean whatever information I can about their progress on the course.

"Ten seconds," the starter says. "Five, four, three, two, one… GO!"

The gradient at the top of the course is slight. Five of the first six gates are upstreams, and I handle the first three cleanly, congratulating myself for my practice sessions on the Wolf. At #4, which hangs over the backwash of a small pourover, I am sucked into the maw of the hole and flipped, rolling up to the sound of cheers from the spectators on the banks and footbridges. Some of the best entertainment at a slalom race is provided by the mediocre racers.

I paddle on, negotiating 5, 6, and 7 with reasonable efficiency, and set up for the first flight of "wicked offsets," as the P.A. announcer calls them. For most, the move of choice at #8 has been to eddy out, cleaning the gate in the process, and to peel out wide to take #9 on river left. Gate 9 must be made with the boat angled back to the right in order to sprint over to #10, on river right. Some paddlers have made #9 "direct," executing a full clockwise spin to achieve the desired angle, while others, C-2s in particular, have taken #9 in reverse and ferried back to river right for #10.

I choose the former method, but being a lefty paddler, I have trouble making the spin and wash through Gate 9 pointed left. Discombobulated, I make a feeble attempt to backpaddle over to #10, but the current is much too strong, and my first "50" is in the books.

The gradient eases now, and I compose a clean run of the next five gates before encountering the next tough move at 16-19. Boldly, I deviate from the plan of most of my fellow racers and do a complete spin in the river-left eddy at #16, setting myself up beautifully for #17. Or so I think: one must enter #17 with the perfect upstream angle in order to catch the foam of a small wave and surf over to #18. My angle is decidedly imperfect, and instead of a smooth surf I experience a violent jolt which jars my paddle grip from my right hand and flops me wrongside up once more. By the time I regain control of my stick and right myself to more of those unwelcome cheers, I have missed gates 18 and 19, and my hole is 100 seconds deeper.

Now I'm upset, in violation of the cardinal rule in slalom to be at peace with oneself at all times. I narrowly avoid passing through #23 the wrong way and collecting another "50." I drift across the beam of the electronic eye to complete what is, in my humble estimation, a perfectly awful run.

At the takeout, I find that I am not the only disgruntled C-1er.

"I didn't know I was capable of paddling so poorly," pants Andy Padyk, who arrives just behind me.

"I have never screwed up a run the way I just did," announces Eric Revels, who drifts down moments later. "I had a one-touch run going until I flipped at #23 and 50'd the last three gates."

I gather up my belongings and begin the journey back to the top. Rounding out the C-1 class are Bahn, McCleskey, and Gillis, and I watch all three take gates 16-19 cleanly and quickly. By the time I reach the footbridge overlooking the 8-11 sequence, the first K-1s are careening downriver.
 
If you would like to know how hot Hell is, just enter the K-1 class at a national-level slalom race. 158 male twin-bladers make the rankings list for 1995, compared with only 90 for C-1, the next-largest class. So loaded is men's kayak that Bobby Hartridge, who is probably quite a bit more talented than I, is only the 101^st-ranked K-1, while I enjoy a fancy 51^st ranking in C-1. Today the mean difference among first-run scores in C-1 is 25.39 seconds. In K-1 it will be less than half that, 11.85 seconds, with many competitors separated by mere hundredths of a second.

One after another the K-1s descend, and the fastest run of the "wicked offsets" is impossible to discern with the naked eye. Chris Rush, Bobby Hartridge, Tom Piccirilli, Craig Law pass through the circuit, darting river-left to take Gate 9, backsweeping back to the right to put their heads a centimeter within #10. Toward the end of the order is a cluster of A-ranked kayakers who have made the trip to East Race. Billy Brennan, Josh Russell, Jay Mulligan, Scott Parsons, Kyle Elliott, and Brian Parsons demonstrate subtle skills that will make their runs a shade faster than those of their predecessors, particularly by foregoing a full "bogey" (eddy-out) at Gate 8 and simply backferrying straight over to #9.
 
Throughout the K-1 class, I have studied the parts of the course that gave me trouble on my first run. Unfortunately, after two ill-fated attempts at a couple of moves, I am beginning to doubt my ability to pull them off on my final run. Given my underdeveloped skill level, Plans B, C, and D seem hardly more feasible than Plan A. My composure has diminished as I return to the starting area, and my hope for an outstanding run has been replaced by a twinge of desperation for a run that is simply passable.

It is times like this when a coach is handy for calming a panicked athlete and putting the situation in perspective. But I have chosen to go it alone, and as such, I can only recall inspiring words I have read. Davey Hearn, the current world champion in C-1, has offered this advice in a recent interview: "You can't think negatively. You have to be positive and have faith. Lots of times that's what separates the higher places from the lower places."

Maybe if I had a few Worlds medals at home in my sock drawer, I could be as upbeat as Davey. Still, if I really believed I couldn't pull myself together, I would pack up the car and leave right now. Instead, I am back behind the wand, the starter counting down the seconds. I sprint out of the gate determined to produce my best run ever. After all, I have paddled well on most of the course, and I feel that if I can run fast and clean through these easy parts and get through the difficult sections without any 50s, I will breathe competitive life once more.

I plop down through Gate 8 into the eddy and set up to peel back out. Trouble is, I never did quite make up my mind what I'm going to do at #9--a stupid mistake, but a surprisingly common one. I find myself in the same left-angled predicament as before.

This time I extend for several aggressive backstrokes, and find myself set up for #10 with no worse than a 5-second penalty to pay. But the cunning canal will allow me no such pass: it snags my paddle blade with one of its "rocks" (a concrete block with a fiberglass covering that resembles part of a Porta-Potty) and over I go. 50-second penalty, Gate 10.

The wind sucked from my sails, I nearly repeat my blunder at 17-18. This time I paddle back up for #18, refusing to fold completely. But just downstream at #23 I flip again and score another 50. So much for the best run ever.

For several minutes I take out my frustration on the surfing wave just above the takeout, then shoulder my boat over to Niles Avenue, where the Corolla is parked. The wind picks up and gives me the shivers as I change into dry clothes, careful not to flash any pedestrian South Benders.

I walk over to the scoreboard to face the awful truth: my scoresheet is second from the bottom. Somehow the judges have awarded me four 50-second penalties rather than two, but it seems pointless to file a protest, as to do so would improve my position no more than a place or two.

Scott McCleskey has moved into first with a clean second run--the only clean run in the C-1 class for the day. Jesse Gillis settles for second with his one-touch first run. Non-U.S. citizen Simon Twigger has taken third, so the final Trials C-1 spot goes to the fourth-place finisher, Todd Murdock, who has kept the penalties under control this time.
 
I scribble down the results for later study and return to the car to begin the ultramarathon drive back to Memphis. I cross the LaSalle Avenue bridge as the last few kayaks are making their way down the course. "A" boaters will take the top seven places in K-1, so the four Olympic Trials berths will go to finishers 8 through 11: Shaun Smith, Ben Gorman, E.J. McCarthy, Abel Hastings.

From the bridge I spot Todd Murdock walking up the canal. I detect the same mood about him that surrounded the Trials qualifiers for C-2 and K-1W earlier in the day. His demeanor carries no obvious celebratory aspect--he hadn't won the Olympics or the Worlds, after all; he'd only won the right to line up with a bunch of superior athletes at Trials--but his inner satisfaction is apparent.

Sport is all about setting personal goals, and then having the discipline to lay out a plan to achieve them. Every time I ran a personal record in the mile or two mile in high school, for instance, I felt the satisfaction of having pushed myself to a place I'd never been before.

Todd and Scott and Jesse and all the other qualifiers are in such a place. And their personal satisfaction is enhanced by an external reward: a ticket to the next level, the right to work out on the nifty new Ocoee Olympic course, an opportunity to make the really big time--the United States Olympic Team. They almost certainly won't do it, of course, but I, for one, will think of them as I watch the world's best in action at the Games on July 26-28.

For now, I have just dipped my feet into the second half of my 22-hour round trip. I won't get home until 2 or 3 AM, and any chance of having a productive day at work tomorrow is shot. All to finish one spot better than dead last.

Another great canoeist, five-time world champion Jon Lugbill, once said, "It's not worth suffering to get to an end. The means must be enjoyable."

Do I enjoy this? There are many things more enjoyable than getting my brains beat out in some stupid boat race. But even when I'm out running a river "just for fun," while my buddies are hooting and hollering and having the time of their lives, I'm silently screaming at myself for blowing a surf or an elevator move I'd seen some hot boater do.

What is enjoyable about that? Why am I doing this?

To create an extraordinary life… that's why. To go where not too many people go, both physically and spiritually. To see wondrous sights and meet fascinating people. Sometimes the rewards aren't so apparent at the time, but after a few days or weeks of reflection, I realize that my experiences are priceless. I have a good job and a nice little life at home, but there's got to be more that. By paddling and racing, I'm out looking for that something more, and every now and then, when I least expect it, I find a little bit of it.

To the south, in the upper reaches of the Mississippi delta, my secure home awaits, a blissful mattress and pillow under its roof. Just ten hours to go.
 
Author's note
The 1996 U.S. Olympic Trials took place at the Ocoee on May18-19, and the team shaped up much as I had predicted it would. In K-1W, Dana Chladek and Cathy Hearn earned spots on the team, while in C-1 it was Davey Hearn and Adam Clawson. In K-1, Rich Weiss and Scott Shipley made the team, and Eric Giddens, who finished third, would end up getting to race in the Games as well when another country declined to use its K-1 berth.

C-2 was the only class I totally failed to predict. Lecky and Fritz Haller, former world champions, had consistently been the top U.S. boat in the previous several years, but at Trials they suffered a big upset at the hands of Horace Holden and Wayne Dickert. Holden, who had competed with a different partner the previous two seasons, pulled Dickert out of retirement for a run at the one C-2 berth on the '96 Olympic Team. Since they hadn't competed together in '95, they were unranked and had to qualify for Trials at the Nantahala. And so, technically, one boat did advance from the regional qualifying round all the way to the Olympic Games.

Here is how the U.S. Team fared at the 1996 Olympics:

K-1W: Dana Chladek 2^nd, Cathy Hearn 7^th
C-1: Davey Hearn 9^th, Adam Clawson 19^th
K-1: Rich Weiss 6^th, Scott Shipley 12^th, Eric Giddens 20^th
C-2: Wayne Dickert and Horace Holden 11^th
 

E.H. 8/96
 
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