After Splashy Debut, Chinn Is Going Strong
In his first year paddling a canoe, Greg Chinn felt as if he spent more time in the water than on top of his boat.
The precarious, kneeling stance paddlers use in the sleek, racing canoes make the boats quite wobbly.
Chinn discovered this in his first race, last year’s Hal Rosoff Classic on Newport Bay. He was leading the pack in the juvenile division when, surprisingly, he took a plunge.
“I was about halfway through. I got back in the boat and I couldn’t catch up,” he said.
Chinn plans to stay on top of the water in this year’s 8,000-meter Hal Rosoff Classic, at 8 a.m. Saturday beginning off Lido Isle and finishing at the Newport Aquatic Center.
Chinn, a freshman at Newport Harbor High, has become an accomplished canoeist over the past year. He won medals in seven of the eight events in which he competed in August at the U.S. Canoe and Kayak Sprint National Championships in Orlando, Fla.
The one race in which he didn’t receive a medal--his first championship final of the competition--was one in which he was disqualified.
After that race, Chinn turned the boat to dump the water and the knee block fell to the ground. Judges would not allow him to replace the knee block before they weighed the boat, so his craft weighed less than the limit.
“I was really disappointed and bummed,” he said.
But Chinn, 15, didn’t stay down long. He collected four golds, two silvers and a bronze medal racing in junior (under 16) and juvenile (15-18) divisions of the four-person and two-person canoes in the 500 meters, the junior divisions of the two-person and one-person canoe at 1,000 meters, and the junior division of the one-person canoe at 500 meters.
Chinn’s performance at the national championships was astounding considering that he had been paddling for only a little more than a year.
Sam Couch, Chinn’s coach at the Newport Aquatic Center, said he can rarely predict which new paddlers will show talent.
“The whole technique of the stroke in both the canoe and the kayak, it’s really technical in terms of how to make the boat go faster in different water conditions. Some people will just have good sense of the water,” Couch said. “One person will come down here and be an excellent athlete in football and . . . [he] can’t even stay up in the boat. Another kid will come down here and [he] can’t even run a mile and [he] will just take off in the boat and you won’t be able to stop him.”
Chinn had two-a-day practices all summer at the Newport Aquatic Center before the national championships.
“My friends would want to go to the beach or go surfing and I would have to paddle,” he said. “I really like all the kids there, so it was just like hanging out with my friends.”
Chinn played youth soccer and basketball but plans to spend most of his energy on paddling through high school. He is on the Newport Harbor High wrestling team and said that sport has helped with his conditioning for rowing.
Chinn plans to compete in the U.S. Canoe and Kayak Junior Sprint Team Trials in Seattle, May 17-18, and after that the junior world championships in Finland, July 19-23.
Chinn doesn’t expect to make the world championships, but he does know one thing:
“I’m going to work harder than last year,” he said.
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The Hal Rosoff Classic will feature top canoe and kayak athletes from around the world and also is open to anyone in a human-powered, single-person craft.
An entry fee of $15 is required. Proceeds benefit the Aquatic Center’s youth programs. Information: (714) 646-7725.
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When Anheuser Busch told Ian Carins it would no longer sponsor the Bud Surf Tour, there was a moment of panic for the former Australian world champion. However, Cairns immediately went to work finding a new sponsor.
That was three months ago. The tour, now called the Clarion Surf Tour, is sponsored by Clarion, a Gardena-based manufacturer of car audio and multimedia products.
Carins, who directed the old tour that was sponsored eight years by Anheuser Busch, will do the same for the Clarion tour. He spoke last week from the tour’s first stop in Santa Cruz.
“It’s like nothing has changed,” he said. “We have great waves, good crowds and a lot of entrees, including some top names who are participating.”
For Cairns, this was especially pleasing because Clarion’s role was completed only 10 days ago.
“It turns out that things just sort of fell into place,” said Cairns, executive director of U.S. Surfing. “For the last two years, Clarion was doing research into becoming a possible sponsor of a surfing event. So when things happened with Bud, it was the perfect opportunity.
“The Bud Surf Tour had become a vital link with those young surfers coming up who were trying to make it on the World Champion Tour. So, it was understandable why there was much concern among the surfers.” The Bud Surf Tour was one of the few ways surfers could qualify for the much larger World Championship Tour.
Cairns said as soon as the contract with Clarion was signed, the stands went up at Steamer Lane in Santa Cruz.
Nancy Sherman, manager of marketing and communication for Clarion, was on site last week to watch the event.
“It’s really thrilling,” Sherman said. “This is the first time Clarion has ever sponsored any athletic tour. We’re proud and lucky to have the chance to sponsor a tour like this.”
Although the tour has been reduced from eight stops to six, Cairns said there will be more prize money because the tour is now a two-star event. The total purse for the tour will be $370,000. The Santa Cruz purse was $47,500.
“It’ll be all mainland events, with five of the six contests in California,” Carins said. “We dropped the two Hawaii events because in the last two years we’ve been there, there were no waves, and it’s too expensive to put on a contest over there.”
From Santa Cruz, the tour travels to Seaside Reef in Cardiff, April 30-May 4; Oceanside, June 11-15; Huntington Beach, Aug. 4-10; Virginia Beach, Va., Aug. 21-24, and Lower Trestles, San Clemente, Sept. 23-27.
