Wet and Wild : Slalom Races Added to Canoe and Kayak Competition

It is testimony to the obscurity of canoe and kayak racing that an early version of the media guide from the Barcelona Olympic Organizing Committee displayed a pictogram for kayaking in the rowing section, a rowing pictogram in the canoe-kayak section and a photo of a kayak race in the rowing section. The guide also referred to the whitewater competition as wildwater.

Forget wildwater. There is no wildwater race at the Olympics. The 1992 Olympic Games will feature two canoe and kayak competitions: flat-water and whitewater--separate events at different venues.

The U.S. team has adopted simpler, more descriptive names for these events: sprint (flatwater) and slalom (whitewater). During the Olympics, any of the four terms may be used.

There are sprint and slalom events for both canoes and kayaks, and the easiest way to tell a canoeist from a kayaker is by the paddle. A canoe paddle has a blade on one end, a kayak paddle on both ends. And if it is a woman racing, it is not a canoe. Women race kayaks only.

Sprinters, like their counterparts on land, race in lanes on a flat course, for either 1,000 or 500 meters.

The sprints produced some exciting moments at the 1988 Olympic Games at Seoul, when mechanical engineer Greg Barton of Homer, Mich., won the 1,000-meter kayak gold medal and, 90 minutes later, teamed with Norman Bellingham of Bethesda, Md., and won the pairs.

Barton, 32, and Bellingham, 27, form a triple threat for the 1992 Olympics, Barton at 1,000 meters, Bellingham at 500 meters and together at 1,000 meters in the doubles.

The big news about slalom racing is that it is included at the Barcelona Games at all. It required the construction of a 600-meter sloping waterway filled with a rushing current, boulders, falls and other water obstacles and cost about $2 million. Because of cost problems and politics, slalom was not contested at Montreal, Moscow, Los Angeles or Seoul.

Jaded viewing audiences accustomed to nonstop motion and special effects might enjoy slalom. With its action, spills, close calls and suspense, and a real element of danger, it is made to order for television.

Canoe and kayak slalom racing is equivalent to snow-ski slalom. The paddlers must negotiate churning water, eddies, holes and rock obstacles as they slip and power through 25 pole gates suspended seven feet above the water.

Paddling closed-decked, round-bottomed boats designed to turn on a dime, competitors race down the course, twisting, pivoting and dodging to avoid the slightest contact with the swaying poles, while maintaining line, speed and economy of stroke.

U.S. competitor Kirsten Brown-Fleshman lost her Olympic chance during the team trials when part of her kayak touched a gate. A touch costs five seconds in penalty points. Missing a gate altogether costs 50 points, a sure loss for the run.

Green-striped gates must be approached going downstream, red-striped gates upstream. In a series of downstream gates, the one placed off the straight line is an offset gate.

Although competitors can practice on the course before a race, the exact configuration of the gates is secret until the competition begins. After the gates are set, the racers run the official course three times--once for practice and twice for official scores and times. Only the best of the two official runs is counted, so a paddler can blow one run and still win.

“Some people get excited by a great first run,” U.S. slalom coach Bill Endicott said. “But you have to wait until the race is over. Often a great first run gets eclipsed by an even better second run.”

THE COACH

Endicott, of Bethesda, Md., quit his Washington, D.C., job in 1983 to become full-time coach. It represented a major philosophical statement.

“He was instrumental in helping the athletes take the sport as seriously as they wanted to,” said 12-time world champion single canoeist Jon Lugbill, also of Bethesda. “He was willing to drop everything in his life for paddling. He showed the athletes we could do the same. He showed it is possible to have a lifestyle centered and focused on canoe slalom.”

Lugbill said Endicott thrives on a competitive atmosphere.

“When there is a problem, Bill doesn’t look for the easiest way out,” he said. “The best way, that is the path he takes. He is willing to focus in and do it, to knock down barriers. That is what we have got to do--just do it. Knock down barriers.”

Endicott also has an analytical mind.

Said his wife, Abbie: “He encourages the athletes to keep logs and make precise plans for the day’s work, and to make specific long- and short-term goals. His coaching style is to encourage them to be their own best coach, not to tell them what to do. He makes them think.”

There is little wasted effort in Endicott’s world.

“Workouts are as short and specific and efficient as possible to get the most out of it,” Abbie said. “If you make it a long session, you just practice going slow. You have to practice at peak performance.”

Endicott is a Boston blueblood whose ancestors include John Endicott, the first governor of Massachusetts, and several prominent ship owners, businessmen and public servants.

He speaks French, German, Italian and Russian and is working on his Spanish for the Games. A Harvard graduate and former Marine officer, he has written four books on slalom racing and has recently finished one on sprint racer Greg Barton. Fit at 46, he was a rower at Harvard and a coach-alternate in canoe pairs at the Munich Olympics. When he did not qualify for the team in what might have been a judge’s error, he never looked back, and threw himself into coaching.

Endicott’s restless intellect finds expression in his sport. It’s no accident that his athletes are bright, highly educated, analytical and fanatical.

THE SLALOM TEAM

More than 20 years ago, slalom canoeist Jamie McEwan, 39, of Silver Spring, Md., went to California in the winter to train. He camped at what became known as “Peanut Butter Park” on the Kern River. He and other ragtag paddlers lived on peanut butter sandwiches and dreams. Tom Johnson, a fire fighter from Kernville, helped the youngsters survive.

McEwan’s travails at Peanut Butter Park paid off at the 1972 Olympics, where the 19-year-old American startled the slalom world by winning a bronze medal.

McEwan’s medal became a beacon for other Americans.

“He and Angus Morrison revolutionized slalom training,” said Abbie Endicott, who does public relations for the international canoe-kayak federation. “They were the first athletes to train full time, to give everything they had to focus for racing. The (other paddling) teen-agers were inspired. Since then, they all have become world champions.”

Between 1979 and 1989, United States paddlers dominated world competition in canoe events. Even without the impetus of Olympic glory every four years, a quiet revolution was taking place.

“As the guys matured, they spearheaded new boat designs,” Abbie Endicott said. “And they were the first to perfect certain kinds of moves you can make with the boats--like sneaking under the slalom poles with the thin bows, and purposely burying the bow or stern to do a pivot turn, or to spin the boat.”

Bob Robison, 31, of Fairfax, Va., the pioneer of those maneuvers, just missed making this year’s Olympic team, hitting the last gate at the trials. He was edged by 20-year-old Adam Clawson of Bryson City, N.C.

A number of those teen-agers who embraced McEwan as a hero 20 years ago are 1992 Olympians, including Davey Hearn, 33, of Bethesda; Lugbill, 31; Dana Chladek, 29, of Bethesda; Davey’s sister, Cathy Hearn, 34, of Lime Rock, Conn., and Cathy’s husband, Lecky Haller, 35.

Haller is McEwan’s canoe pairs partner. Their best competitive years were 1987, when they won a silver at the World Championships, and 1988 and 1989, when they were first and second overall in the World Cup. McEwan has qualified for his second Olympic team after a span of 20 years. Married and the father of four, he no longer has to eat peanut butter sandwiches.

McEwan’s 1972 medal inspired Cathy Hearn, who is quoted in Bill Endicott’s book, “The Ultimate Run:”

“In 1972 we were on a dirt road in Montana, driving along . . . listening to the radio. We heard this news flash say that Jamie McEwan of the Washington, D.C., area had just won a bronze medal in the slalom Olympics. I decided right then and there that’s what I wanted to do, too.”

She won all three kayak gold medals at the 1979 World Championships and took a bronze and silver at the 1989 World Championships.

Brother Davey has won more national whitewater slalom canoe singles championships than any other American. He won the World Championships in 1985, defeating teammate Lugbill after a string of five second places. And he and Lugbill, with various third paddlers, are undefeated since 1979 in the canoe team event.

Chladek’s mother was competed for Czechoslovakia in the 1963 World Championships. Chladek, the 1988 World Cup champion and 1991 World Championship silver and bronze medalist, is a Dartmouth graduate who was the top female at the U.S. Olympic team trials.

THE TOP COMPETITORS

Jon Lugbill is frequently called the greatest slalom canoeist ever.

His world dominance in singles slalom canoe spans a decade, and, at 31, he is looking for an Olympic gold medal to complete the honors. He won his first World Championship in 1979 at 18, then won again in 1981, ‘83, ’87 and ’89. In 1985 he was second to Davey Hearn--World Championships are held every two years. Thus the United States has won every canoe singles World Championship for 10 years, and Lugbill also won the World Cup in 1990.

Lugbill has not competed internationally this year. He holds a degree in environmental science from the University of Virginia and works as an environmental planner for the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments. He is on a 10-month Olympic training leave.

“I think he’s better than he’s ever been,” said Endicott, who has coached Lugbill for 15 years.

Lugbill’s style is fast and aggressive. Hearn’s is more cautious, but cleaner. Clawson rounds out the three U.S. singles entries.

Behind Cathy Hearn and Chladek, the third woman kayaker is Maylon Hanold, 28, of Seattle, who qualified at the trials shortly after undergoing shoulder surgery.

Besides Haller and McEwan, men’s canoe doubles entries include Martin McCormick, 27, and Elliot Weintrob, 27, of Potomac, Md.; and Scott Strausbaugh, 28, and Joe Jacobi, 22, of Bryson City, N.C.

The men slalom kayakers have yet to produce the overwhelming international impact of the canoeists, but, at 14th and 15th places at the 1991 World Championships, Eric Jackson, 28, of Barnesville, Md., and Scott Shipley, 21, of Poulsbo, Wash., are in the game. The third male kayaker, Rich Weiss, 28, of Steamboat Springs, Colo., is ranked third in 1991 World Cup standings.

THE SECRET WEAPON

The U.S. whitewater slalom team’s secret training weapon can be found 38 miles from the White House, behind fences and a guarded gate, in the shadow of an electrical power plant on the Potomac River in Dickerson, Md.

This is the Dickerson Canal, a 900-foot slalom course built for the use of the United States elite slalom racers in the electrical plant’s warm-water discharge canal. Endicott calls it the finest slalom training facility in the world.

It is also a triumph of cooperation and ingenuity. Although the Potomac and Savage Rivers have provided training water through the years for the U.S. slalom team, no artificial course was available in this country. To train properly meant long, expensive stretches in Europe.

Endicott and the paddlers had frequently cast envious eyes on the 30-year-old canal, which carries water used to cool 1,000-degree steam that turns the turbines in the massive Potomac Electric Power Company plant. The water flows out at 15 to 20 degrees warmer than it comes out of the adjacent Potomac, providing a year-round, warm-water, world-class training facility in the team’s back yard.

Whitewater paddlers Scott Wilkinson, a filmmaker, and John Anderson, an architect, approached Potomac Electric Power Company officials with a proposal late last summer. The company, a 96-year-old investor-owned private utility, agreed to provide $2,500 and also lend a hand with engineering.

The canal was adapted at a cost of $75,000.

“In 2 1/2 months the course was ready,” Endicott said. “It was done while (the team was) in Spain. We didn’t lift a single rock.”

The facility has given the U.S. team an edge.

“If we didn’t get this thing here, we would have fallen behind,” Endicott said.