2008 Olympic Team Trials!!

Day 3

Sun, 27 Apr 2008 14:28:13 -0500

Today started bright and early, as we had the awards from the Pan American Championships were to be given out at 10:00, with the race to begin at 11:00. This meant that all prep had to be pushed up a bit.
The awards ceremony, this one the country awards for the Pan Am’s was really neat! The ceremony was hosted by Pan Am Chairman, Charles Yachtman, who has been chairman for as long as I can remember. Awards were given to Jean Michel Prono, head course designer and a past French team coach (and definitely the best women’s coach in the world!), as well as Eric Giddens and Andreas Behrs for their help with race execution. There was then an award that is a lifetime award for service to development in the U.S. It was awarded to Ben and I for the Red River Racing Team!! I was so surprised, but really happy at the same time for the team to be recognized. It was also really neat to accept the award from Yachtman and Prono. It was also really awesome to get to see Pablo get his medal and be awarded the Chilean Olympic spot! The individual Pan American Awards would be given out at the end of the day.(The first ceremony gave awards to 1 athlete per country according to rank).
The course set seemed easier but was littered with potential land mines. There was a tricky dive move coming off of the Hulk Falls section with some definitive offsetts following, as well as a interesting down into the final up set at Final Destination. Ben and Marks first run was fairly clean, but required a loop at gate 10 after the Hulk Falls move. The bottom of the course was executed beautifully and the team posted a respectable time of 131 seconds, placing them in 3rd place. After 2.5 days of racing you could see every athlete was starting to get tired. Ben and Mark watched video of their runs between runs, and Ben took a nap in the car for a bit to get revived.
Second run’s, the pair took off like crazy from the starting gate. The top of the course was super fast, but the pair picked up a few penalties. The run would have been superb, but leaving gate 17 and upstream before the big Final Destination, the pair pulled out and got on a bit of unstable water and bobbled into gate 18 just above the drop. The pole hit Ben in the head and shot to the inside of him toward Mark, and the guys split the gate on the way down the drop. This meant that the two had fiftied the gate, and would have to finish strong and wait and see how the other teams would do. Heather and I held our breath, as we watched the other teams come flying down the course. In the end they would be 5th. We all waited to hear the unofficial results for the team to see if their results over 3 days would qualify them for 3rd place. They did!!!! Mark and Ben were then rushed off to the joys of drug testing with their anti-doping chaperones before going to awards!
The second awards ceremony was really exciting, as many upsets had happened throughout the weekend. Mark and Ben received their awards for their second place finish for the Pan American International as well as their third place finish for the Team Trials. In the men’s kayak class Brett Heyl beat out gold medal favorite Scott Parsons who placed a very close second, and Scott Mann finally made the team after years of exhausting determination! In the women’s class Zuzana Vanha edged out Heather Corrie for the gold medal, with the Olympic boat to be decided at the World Cup in Augsberg, Germany this summer. In the Men’s C-1 class Jeff Larimer pulled off a huge upset beating out Veteran team member Ben Fraker, and an old friend Tad Dennis made the 3rd spot on the team, for his first chance to represent the US. The first ever women’s C-1 Team was also selected!! Way to go ladies!!

Congratulations to all of the new 2008 US Team Members, and Pan American Championships.

I have posted new pictures from awards and the third day’s competition in the photo album (newer photos towards the end), and don’t forget there is a link to all of the results on the front of the blog as well!!

Day 2

Sat, 26 Apr 2008 14:19:43 -0500

Today was a GREAT DAY!
Working hard to come from behind, Ben and Mark laid down to solid runs. The course being much more interesting than the day before, called for everyone to bring out their best technique and their full supply of courage. The results from today also counted as the Pan American Championships Finals. Several countries were racing for their chance to secure an Olympic Spot!
Mark and Ben’s first run was very solid, but was not their fastest. They had several penalties and a slide out of gate thirteen that ate a bit of their time. Still, the run was solid and they were in 3rd place. The Brazilian team had been blazing down the course, and took the ferry across to gate 19 above final destination a bit too wide, and ended up hitting the side of the course wall, and splitting the gate before getting busted by the hydraulic below and needing to make a wide loop in order to get to gate 20. Splitting a gate is where one paddler makes it through and the other paddler does not.
Ben took his kayak run next, and had a much more solid run than yesterday placing him at the top of the leader board for a good while. He was 28th out of 55 after first runs. The competition in the men’s kayak was so intense today that the top 20 were ready to take on the world, and the top 6 had clean runs, and were no more than 3 second off of each other!
On their second C-2 run, Mark and Ben again laid down a much faster (although a tad dirtier) run and held their breath to see how things would fan out! The team of Crane and McClesky came blazing down the course into first place, and the Brazilian team desperately tried to make up the time that they lost on first runs. However, the most shocking thing was what happened next. The team of Eichfeld and Powell, flew down the course, popped through the hydraulic at Final Destination, and then split gate 20. This kept Mark and Ben in Second place. So the team earned a Silver Medal at the Pan American Championships!! I was hoping to have a picture of them on the awards podium for everyone, but a big storm blew in and the awards were postponed until 10:00am tomorrow!
Ben took his second run with a larger burst of energy, and took five seconds and five places off of his final score to place 23rd overall! Not bad since he has only really been paddling C-2. He also purchase a beautiful boat today for one of our Juniors, Erin Cambridge, that he will race tomorrow. The boat is much better than the one he is currently using! It will be interesting to see what his scores do.

Other HUGE successes were that two athletes today, including one of friends secured Olympic birth’s. Sarah Boudens of Canada secured a spot for her country as well as Pablo McCandless of Chile! Some of you may remember Pablo as he started his journey at our qualifier this February in San Marcos! He is a very dedicated racer, who has spent much of his time not only training for himself, but giving back and working with many US athletes. His love not only for the sport but for people, was well represented by the number of fans, family members, and athletes wearing bright pink I (heart) Pablo T-shirts at the course today! Go Chile!

Don’t forget to check out the live results link on the front of this blog, as well as the new Photo Gallery!!

Day 1

Fri, 25 Apr 2008 00:00:00 -0500

Today Ben and Mark entered the Dog-Fight!

The course at first glance seemed very straight forward. The first day of trials usually is the easiest. However, upon further inspection it was clear that the course designers had been very sly. A tricky set of offsets made a great “thread the needle” experience just about the big drop named “Hulk Falls, “ and the dive move into “Final Destination” at the bottom would in the end show no mercy!
For Mark and Ben, this was the first day of Trials and the Pan American Championships. If they did well enough on their first run, their results would be counted for the Semi-Finals of the Pan Am’s as well as for the first day of trials.
The first run was very solid up top, they had good splits and only bogied (circled around) one move that even the kayaks were having trouble with. The offsetts were clean and they had very few touches. Heather ,Mark’s girlfriend, and I held our breath as they came into the last turn. They would have to set their angle just so, coming out of the last upstream, in order to bust through the massive hydraulic at the bottom. The move was finicky, as I had seen several kayaks either ace it beautifully, or get completely hammered by being just a bit to the left, or a hair to the right. Mark and Ben pulled out of the upstream and pulled on top of the whitewater to charge the line. They were just a tad to the left. The hydraulic grabbed their boat and tossed them into the froth. By the time we realized they were over, using a remarkable presence of mind, the team had rolled up and were circling back for the first gate. They quickly raced back up, as the water seethed in the almost non-eddies to get gate 20 and sprint to the finish.
Despite the error, the two were sitting in fourth place and qualified to go on to the Pan-Am semi finals. The teams in front of them were the top 2 American teams, and one Brazilian Team. This means that they were the 3rd for the US, and 4th in the Pan-Am’s So far.
Ben almost immediately afterward jumped in his kayak and took a run. He had a fantastic kick flip move going into gate 18. The boat he was borrowing is a bit small, and he was catching edges enough to send him sharply over, as he entered the last eddy. he was up immediately, and we wondered if Ben had been having way too much fun playing Sladeo. In the end he would still place 22 out of 55 kayaks without training in the kayak hardly at all. He is working on borrowing a bigger boat for tomorrow.
The team spent much of the afternoon seeking shade and watching the video from the previous run. Ben said the hole at the bottom had slammed him pretty hard, but he was feeling good!
Their second run was even better than the first at the top, with fewer penalties, we held our breath again as the intrepid canoer’s pulled out into the froth above “Final Destination”. This time, they broke through the water, and cleared the hole, but got shoved to the left so hard that they did not have time to react. They then quickly began to steer their boat toward gate 20 and made it with some head ducking, and finished with a strong sprint.
The frustration was obvious, but they were still able to hold on to their 4th place finish. This result was high enough to qualify them for the Pan American Finals today (where if they place, their is USOC funding awarded) and to place them 3rd so far in the trials. Their main goal for tomorrow will be to make the necessary percentage off of the men’s kayaks to qualify for the US Team!
Keep us in your prayers and don’t forget to check out the live results that are are linked up on the front page of this blog!

Thanks everyone for your support!!

Pan american Qualification!!

Thu, 24 Apr 2008 13:31:59 -0500

Mark Poindexter and Ben Kvanli qualified Tuesday to represent the US in the Pan American Championships where they will race to win the Olympic spot for the USA. "This is kind of like getting an appetizer before you have hunted for dinner," explains Ben, "because we still have to win this weekend to get the only Olympic boat available to North and South America."

"We really fought for that one," Mark reports, "We came from behind after being pummeled in the hole at the bottom of the big drop (called "Final Destination") on our 1st run."

"Yeah, before our 2nd run I wondered if Mark might be mad, because neither one of us had said a positive word about our 1st run, and attitude can play a big part in the performance of this team event," Ben commented.

"No," Mark responded, "I love coming from behind, especially after such a difficult flip. If we can overcome getting beat up, upside down, at the very end of a race run, then we can do anything!"

They will need every bit of that kind of grit and determination to go to the Olympics this summer, because even if they win the one Pan American spot they still have to get more points than their US team-mates in a best 2 out of 3 race series to secure the Olympic Team position.

Ben and Mark just edged out Olympic bronze medalist Jamie McEwan and his son, Devin by three seconds in the race on Tuesday, but their team-mates at the Pan American Championships were pre-qualified based on their results from 2007. They include the some very bright teenagers from Pennsylvania named Casey Eichfeld and Ricky Powell who won the Team Trials last year, and the twenty-something team of Austin Crane and Scott McCleskey who have been on the US team for several years.

"Fortunately, the Pan Ams are here in the US this year, because we could not afford to go to South America for instance," Ben says. "Having a real world-class whitewater course here is a huge advantage this year, that we have never had before." The last time that the Pan American Championships were held in the US Kvanli and Poindexter placed second to Canadians Beniot & Francois.

Ben and Mark teach others to kayak and canoe to raise money for their non-profit racing team called the Red River Racing Team (www.KayakInstruction.org). Ben competed in the 1996 Olympics in men's kayak, but says that he finds the team event much more rewarding because you share the risks and rewards of competition with others. Through this non-profit, founded after those Olympics, he and Mark have shared this sport with people of all ages and abilities from all walks of life. "It is amazing to see the transformation in a person when they discover that they can paddle to. Whether they are 80 yrs old or 8 yrs old, whether they just got back from Iraq or they could barely get out of bed this morning paddling captivates people's attention like nothing else that I have ever seen. I think that it is something in the water," Ben says.
Check out the attached pictures of Ben and Mark and the results of Tuesdays race or to see pictures of the US National Whitewater Center http://web.mac.com/slalom2008/Slalom/Photos/Pages/USNWC.html