<strong>The</strong>PADDLER 128 Training days <strong>The</strong> qualification course was enough for me at these high levels: around half the paddlers there were opting out of the entire course, due to the TNT section, particularly in the light that the safety team are not present for the training days (it’s too expensive). After some deliberation, Mike ran the whole course. To our disappointment, he was fine. He has never swum, and I had half-hoped he might do it here, with a humiliating man hug rescue from one of the many live bait guys lining then banks (the safety here is brilliant). Mike’s one run down the main course gave him 129th place out of 175. Only the top 52 men going through. If I tell you that Peter Csonka, ex-freestyle champion, only just made the grade, that will give an idea of how stiff the competition here is. Tom provided far more entertainment, taking four runs down the qualifier section, each one seemingly more comically awful than the one before it. On his last, the crowd erupted in cheers as he finally rolled up for the umpteenth time just as he crossed the finishing line upside down. Rob, Mike and I sighed in disappointment, having hoped for a swim. In all seriousness though, Tom showed some bravery in going out and getting battered again and again, and always rolling up. That’s what I mean about the playboater thing. <strong>The</strong> other thing about this is that the qualification course, although a stiff, intimidating challenge, is still a place where you can laugh about swims. On Friday night, the Big O movie night showed a short film of Bren Orton’s first descent of Norway’s steep, long creek, Megatron, and a fulllength film of some massive-volume expedition paddling in Pakistan – Into the Indus. We checked in at the well-named Losers’ Party on the way home. An angry, disappointed paddler… an eponymous loser if you like… stood outside, and angrily kicked a can against the wall as we walked past, while a few peers inside sipped beer quietly. We enjoyed this spectacle almost as much as the empassioned young man who nearly burst into tears at seeing his result that day, but we passed the party by, returning to our rented flat to watch Enter the Dragon and engage in puerile, vacuous banter until bedtime, an art we are well versed in. Finals day saw the level drop slightly to the high 180s, still a chunky level, and the sun out. Favourites to take it, with double British winner Joe Morley out of the running, were three-times NZ winner Sam Sutton; US phenomenon Dane Jackson, whose achievements in kayaking are so broad and numerous that he has to be counted as a contender in whatever he enters; last year’s winner, the Catalonian paddler Aniol Serrasolses and the 2015 winner, his brother Gerd. Winners In the end Dane took the all-time course record in 53.8 seconds in the semis. But in the final, where it counted, Sam put in a good run of 54.9s to be crowned the <strong>2017</strong> Sickline men’s winner, for an amazing fourth time. It must have felt good, after having lost out to Catalonian paddler Aniol Serrasolses last year by just a hundredth of a second. In the women’s race, Nouria Newman beat her nearest rival by two seconds to take the crown for the first time. “I was struggling in the high water levels,” Sam Sutton told <strong>Paddler</strong> magazine as he stepped off the podium, a modest statement profoundly belied by his run. I had a few minutes with race director Mike Hammel, who told me that inclusivity is a big part of the Sickline. “It’s not F1” he told me. “You can’t win it with money,” a point underlined by a survey conducted during this year’s event, where a two-thirds majority voted against carbon boats in the race. A slightly harder question to answer is how the event can call itself the world championship of extreme kayaking, when there are other races that are more challenging (like the North Fork or Green River) and in some cases have been around longer than the decade Sickline has been running for.
In the women’s race, Nouria Newman beat her nearest rival by two seconds RESULTS Men 1. Sam Sutton (NZ) 54.9 2. Aniol Serrasolses (ESP) 55.2 3. Alexander Grimm (GER) 55.4 Women 1. Nouria Newman (FRA) 1.01.8 2 Martina Wegman (NED) 1.04.8 3. Jennifer Chrimes (GBR) 1.09.4 <strong>The</strong>PADDLER 129
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