Augsburg, Germany
July 20, 2002

These images capture some of the personality of the Augsburg event -- not the least being the huge Ronald McDonald that sat over the course like a jolly Buddha. One of the highlights of this race was the arrival of Bill and Abbie Endicott to help out with the team. They took splits and coached on the last part of the course for all three race days. We spent a long dinner with them talking about old times and new trends.

A peculiar event has debuted this year -- the "Category 4 Team race" -- and not without a little grumbling. This poorly conceived event won lackluster performances from almost all of the teams, including the U.S. The idea is to have a boat from each class racing on a "team" down the course (that's four boats on the course at once), but it really ended up being a series of individual runs that ultimately piled up in one or two of the last upstreams. When the reigning World Champion (David Ford, of Canada) spun out and proceeded to back through the last upstream, many observers noted that the "jig was up" for this event. The Slovenians -- who do not have a C-2 and therefore cannot field a "Cat-4 Team" -- have told the ICF (International Canoe Federation) that they will not put the event on the schedule for this week's World Cup in Tacen. The ICF threatened to cancel future World Cups in Slovenia, and the Slovenians counter threatened to hold a 35,000 euro cash-prize slalom event the same weekend of a World Cup race, thus insuring the top boaters will indeed race in Tacen. How's that for hard ball?

Photographer: Kieran Cannistra
7/20/2002