Maggie K. Elestwani, Houston Chronicle, Opinion piece, February 26, 2006

 

Nothing could have been further from my mind on this perfect, crisply cool Sunday on a shady, baby blue suburban Houston front porch surrounded by my second try at a zone 9 cottage garden, country music wafting through the nook windows. But maybe it was last weekend's sylvan races of Olympic pre-qualifying kayak slalom adrenalin in our charged-athletes-only, freezing Hill Country water of the temperate Guadelupe River that explained so much. The Sunday sports columnist called it the spirit of the Games. I wanted to see the early, unsung portion, the long road there.

 

I didn't know what I would find. I had e-mailed back & forth to the race organizers. I surfed the net to find the Olympic USA Canoe Kayak site. I found a gem of a book on Texas Whitewater by Texas A & M professor Steve Daniels. Who knew there were so many places to paddle here? For this career-minded, traffic-logged mom, I found that the Olympic bug is contagious.

 

Barely knowing my way to Hueco Springs Campground along River Road (this road floods.) in New Braunfels for the 15- year-old 2006 Texas Whitewater Championship at Slumber Falls , I asked people unloading kayak-laden SUV's behind the fence if they could direct me - I was there. And I got a glimpse of something.

 

An Olympic slalom judge and long-time instructor at the Nantahala Outdoor Center said kayaking showcases a very private relationship of human to water like a dance. To me it was like a conversation in which you may agree or may not. And then you choose to be in a space or go in a direction that the water may not agree to. But you do and it's done in total respect and oneness with the rushing water. Kayak slalom is one discipline of kayaking that does that.

 

A former USA Olympic team member felt that kayaking is more like the winter Olympic sports - downhill skiing, moguls. It was the same dialogue with natural forces that is intrinsic to the process of these sports.

 

And it's a process. I can see why after looking at the Class II whitewater of the race. Racers decked out in helmets & PFD's in Olympic-standard kayaks were identified by judges only by their numbered bibs and idled above the Slumber Falls course with venerable cypress in attendance, like a crowd of Treebeards. The course was formed by the Guad & the outlet of a steamy warm Hueco Springs. Lines strung across Slumber Falls held the 3-piece gates. Red gates were ran "up hill" (Upupupupup!) and green gates run downhill or with the current. Really good runs and tremendous efforts got shouts of whoohoo!

 

Touching the gate, like the figure skating fall, was an "Awww." Racer's faces were so concentrated after a gate touch in order to regain the momentum and the Edge. Judges watching carefully scored on the sheets and called in the scores of station - bib - gate - penalty to the chief judge and tabulator who were like dots in the distance down the 18 -gate course. Penalties seemed to pile up at the last leg as the racers tired even as the last gates were looming.

 

And 2-person decked canoe was amazing - it seemed light-years harder. Now you had to move a longer boat through possibly wind-swung 3-foot wide gates near cypress roots, rock walls, and river bank.

 

Pulling together these skills together definitely do not happen overnight. The Olympic athletes don't just appear in the Games but train throughout the year & back in time to the beginning as a 5-6 year-old daughter of paddlers who went on to win at the 2005 Pan American Games like contender Zuzana Vanha. Or the Colorado club of juniors (14-17 years) & seniors (18-40) that took a week off of school and work to train at the Power Olympic Outdoor Center to hone the precise, demanding skills of slalom on the San Marcos . Or our own Texas homegrown folks who, like all Olympic athletes at their best, exhibit determination, grace, and an impish, fun streak born of their love for their sport.

 

After the drive from Houston Saturday, I watched those practice runs. the final gate set-up, and solo demonstration run by 2005 National Champion Mark Poindexter, of Austin . He was the volunteer race director of the races and did not compete in the qualifier because on Sunday his would be advantage water.

The organizers had invited me for DVD night later after dinner at Casa Maria's, a San Marcos haunt with a panaderia that reaches towards the light of an athlete's carbohydrate heaven. At the Power Olympic Outdoor Center I shared in the camaraderie of whitewater friends on Mexico trips - boofing waterfalls, maneuvering around rock gardens, and new places to paddle scouted by Ben Kvanli so typical in the safety-conscious, adrenalin-charged whitewater world. Poindexter calls it calculated risks. Kvanli and his wife Michelle lead trips for guests of all ages and abilities, who become like family and sign each other's photos for their album of memorable road trips. They call it playing on the water, and all of the money raised goes back to the non-profit Center to help fund young people's Olympic dreams.

 

On Sunday, the lone kayaker went through the slalom gates for the final time before they were taken down. He had set up the challenge in the low water - not as contradictory as it may seem. His run was quick and clean - not a gate touched nor missed nor in an incorrect order nor backwards nor missed by having a head below the water between the gates. He was beyond that technical finesse by years. But he wasn't beyond the joy that being on the river brings.

 

The Olympic weekend ended abruptly with BarBQ at Rudy's for après kayak after taking down the course, and packing away the gates for the next season.

 

In the end when the final scores had been shared, there were no trophies except the ticket to the national trials and the inner one - a mental step forward to the Summer Games in Beijing in 2008. Each athlete's dialogue with the water would be taken up the next day in practice and then in front of everyone again at the nationals to vie for a spot on Team USA .

 

Remembering the small hardy crowd shivering alongside the racers and race volunteers on an uncommonly cold Sunday on the Guadalupe River , I realized that if fellow Texans want to see the beginnings of Olympians, we don't have to leave our own backyard. Here's where the Olympic dream begins.

"The Olympic Spirit and the Long Road There"