Paddling toward Sydney
by Sean Sedam
Gazette Staff Writer
June 14, 2000
As Davey Hearn paddled his canoe through the gates of the Potomac Electric Power Company's Dickerson Whitewater Course, his wife Jennifer raced after him along the banks, pushing their son Jesse in a three-wheeled stroller and yelling encouragement.
At the bottom of the slalom course on the grounds of Pepco's Dickerson Generating Station, which hosted the Dickerson Whitewater Championships on Saturday, photographers snapped pictures as the couple, long-time fixtures of the United States Whitewater Canoe and Kayak team, discussed Davey's run.
"I had real nice water and good position, but I didn't remember to push it low. I got it high," Davey told Jennifer as he floated in his canoe along the shore of the Potomac River. Jennifer handed a clipboard to her husband, who kneeled in his boat, clad in a blue shirt and white racing bib adorned with the number 27 and the words "Pepco" and "Bethesda Center of Excellence."
Hearn kneeled in the yellow boat, covered with sponsor logos and that of "U.S. Champion," looking over a chart documenting his two runs and the results of the other competitors in the C-1 (one-man canoe) men's category.
On Saturday, Hearn finished second in the C-1 category that he has won 17 times at the U.S. National Championships. Hearn, who lives in Bethesda and graduated from Walter Johnson High School, holds 26 whitewater national titles in various events--more than any other American. Robin Bell, a member of the Australian Olympic team, took first place. Canada's Jamie Cartwright took third in the event. "Olympic boats one-two-three -- as it should be," Jennifer said. "I mean, we all wanted to beat those Olympic boats."
"It pretty much worked out according to the world rankings," said Hearn, who at 41 is recovering from shoulder surgery last October while preparing to compete in the Summer Olympics against athletes half his age. "I'm the oldest guy in my category," he said. "I'm old enough to be these guys' dad, some of them."
The race brought athletes from six countries to compete in an Olympic tune-up prior to this weekend's World Cup on the Ocoee River in Tennessee. Bell kept the importance of performing well at the event in perspective. "It's $1,500 important," he said.
The 22-year-old plans on putting the money towards purchasing a car when he returns to Sydney, where he moved in February 1998 in order to train on the course that will host the whitewater events for the Summer Olympics, Sept. 17-20.
Bell doesn't think training on the Olympic course gives him much of an advantage, though. "Everyone who's going [to the Olympics] has been there longer than I have," said Bell, who won a silver medal at last year's World Championships, which were held on the same whitewater course as the 1992 Olympics in Barcelona, Spain. After a month or so of training, competitors learn the course so well that any home advantage the Australians might have disappears, Bell said.
In effect, the Olympic competition will come down to the pressure of two runs on a course most of the competitors know. Combine that with thousands of spectators -- a surreal experience for athletes used to training with only the solitude of the rushing water -- and you get the pressure of Olympic competition. "That's what sport is about," Bell said. "The person who wins is the person who deals the best."
About 100 spectators -- many of them also competitors -- braved temperatures in the mid-90s to attend Saturday's event. The crowd represented a fairly large turnout for whitewater race in the U.S. Events in Europe, where outdoor sports receive more attention, always draw larger crowds, Bell said.
The Dickerson event featured many racers from the Washington area, considered one of the best regions for whitewater in the world. The Bethesda Center of Excellence (BCE), the racing program of the Canoe Cruisers Association of Greater Washington, D.C., Inc., and an official training center for the United States Whitewater Canoe and Kayak team, receives grants from the United States Olympic Committee. Club members from age 14 to 60 and over compete in the national championships and at the U.S. Olympic team trials.
When Cathy Hearn -- Davey's sister -- won three of a possible four gold medals in the 1979 World Championships, more whitewater racers began taking serious notice of the Washington area as a region that offers competitors many ideal training sites.
"It's got great year-round whitewater from Great Falls to Little Falls," said Jennifer Hearn, a member of the U.S. Whitewater team in 1994 and 1995. Cathy, who won the K-1 (one-woman kayak) women's category, is a two-time Olympian and part-time coach of the U.S. team who will also compete at the Olympics in Sydney.
Since Cathy's performance at the 1979 World Champions, the sport's popularity has grown, as evidenced by the number of vehicles with boats strapped to their roofs traveling Washington roads. "In the '80s we used to know everybody with boats on their cars," Jennifer said. "Now it's like, 'Who's that?'"
The slalom course at Pepco's Dickerson Generating Station provides one of the reasons why Washington has become a training home to the U.S. team. BCE constructed the 300-meter artificial course with Pepco's permission in 1991. It features uncontrolled water levels and Class IV whitewater.
"It's a pretty hard course," said BCE member John Grumbine, 24. Grumbine moved to Bethesda from South Carolina in order to train. "It has surges created by the smooth walls, the rocks are in strange places and it has toilet bowl eddies," he said.
The course's water source also provides it with a unique characteristic that allows athletes to train there year-round: heated water. The course is constructed along the spillway that returns water to the Potomac after Pepco uses it to cool the coal-fire generators at the power plant. While the water temperature cannot rise above certain environmental standards, it gives athletes a welcome place to train, even in the dead of winter. However, in the summer when the river's water temperature rises, flipping over in a boat on the course compares to "sticking your head in a bowl of hot soup," Davey Hearn said.
This week Pepco announced the sale of the Dickerson plant to Southern Energy, Inc., of Atlanta. BCE members hope the new owners will see the value of the course as an Olympic training site and allow the club to continue to use it. "The concern we have is that they understand what we're doing here fully," said Tom McEwan, a canoe and kayak coach and BCE member. "This is a Mecca to train at the highest level -- this course is vital to that."
