By Lucien Libert
VAIRES-SUR-MARNE, France (Reuters) – Paris got a taste of kayak cross on Sunday, when the World Cup drew capacity crowds to witness the excitement of this extreme canoe slalom event in which competitors battle for position though rapids and gates.
Kayak cross will make its Olympic debut at the 2024 Games in Paris, and locals got a flavour of what to expect, at the white-water Olympic stadium of Vaires-sur-Marne.
France’s Boris Neveu and New Zealand’s Luuka Jones won gold, in the race where four competitors charge down the river and race to be first across the finish line, similar to ski cross or BMX.
“The average viewer or non-expert viewer engages much more with this format, they immediately see that things are happening,” Jean-Michel Prono, technical chairman for canoe slalom at the International Canoeing Federation, said.
“There is opposition, there are shocks, there are changes,” he added.
Canoe slalom appeared for the first time at the 1972 Munich Olympics and definitively entered the Olympic programme at the 1992 Barcelona Games. But athletes were competing against the clock, and not each other.
The excitement starts from the very beginning where racers launch from a platform several metres high.
“So a kayak cross event begins with a four-person ramp jump. The ramp here is almost five meters high, it accelerates very hard,” Frederic Rebeyrol, France’s head coach said.
From there on, it is a dash to the first buoy, which paddlers need to negotiate downstream or upstream. Opponents fight each other to be in the best position and anything goes in order to do that.
“From the first turns, you have to strategically position yourself to take the trajectory and be ahead of the competitor. Here we are not in a race against time,” Rebeyrol added.
To spice things up even more, a compulsory kayak roll has to be performed halfway down the course where racers need to complete a 360-degree flip by plunging into the water.
“All kayak crossers are slalomers originally, there is no one who really comes from other sports,” Titouan Castryck of the French team said.
“So we come from a discipline without direct confrontation, without contact, so obviously having four on the same course with really heavy boats is quite special.”
For Jean-Michel Prono, the sport which is easier to understand has found appetite both with spectators and broadcasters.
“As for the impact on possible sponsors at the moment, no one has yet come to offer to sponsor us, but why not?
“This is one of the reasons why the television assessment this year will be important and in particular at the time of the Games, because I believe that it can be a spotlight on the format and the athletes who will win medals.
“But hey, only the future will tell us.”
(Writing by Trevor Stynes, editing by Pritha Sarkar)
