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World Sprints Sacramento 8-4-08

Aloha paddlers

Just got back from the World Sprints at Sacramento, which lasted a week.  I must say it was an experience that will last a lifetime.  The last World Sprints I attended was held at the Marine Stadium at Long Beach California. I wasn’t too excited about this one, as we are not into sprints as much as long distance.  However Cheance Adair our Southern Cal outrigger racing association leader asked my brother- in- law Josh Crayton to coach the SCORA teams. Josh asked our men’s coach Danny Ching to assist him in the open men and Bill Bauer to assist in the senior and golden masters men.  Lori Kitahara took care of registration and Bud Holh started nearly every race. A few of my senior masters teammates were interested, so naturally everyone assumed I was going too. As the project gathered momentum I could find no excuse to stay home.

Selection.  When we first heard about the sprints last year, there was great interest in Southern California and many paddlers wanted to attend, mainly because it was close to home. But as the date drew closer, the interest seemed to wane and finding good paddlers was difficult.  In the end the coaches selected teams by asking who wanted to go to the World Sprints.  If you raised your hand or said yes, you were just about on the team.  We had about four or five workouts together and if you were still there, you were, “In”.  At the race, we saw how serious the other teams were and we were shocked.  Some teams were selected after many time trials months ahead of time and their hard work reflected their great performances. 

We arrived on Sunday.  It was hot.  The SCORA contingency helped rig and carry everyone’s boats in and out of the water.  By day’s end I was exhausted and hadn’t even paddled. The layout of the venue was beautiful.  Located on Lake Natoma, the lanes, buoys and flags were laid in perfect symmetry.  White tents lined the shoreline parallel to the course with a nice sandy beachfront.  Restrooms and green grass accommodated the crowds. Venders and small booths hawked handmade shirts, adornments and handcrafted Polynesian paddles, and adornments.  The food booths were great, serving delicious food and drinks.  Earlier in the week, the sun came up and slowly heated the land until it was hovering plus or minus 100 degrees.

Every evening after breaking down videos of the day with coach Josh, everyone would retire to the hotel pool, break out the beer and relax in the hot tub or discuss our day’s events.  It was one of the best times of the day as we got to know each other better.  One of the fun things was finally getting to race in a crew composed of my, “Opponents.”  After racing against each other for decades, suddenly Dennis Campbell, Calvin Hirahara, Bill Bauer and many others were my teammates.  I remember Dennis saying to me at the pool, “Hi teammate.”  We paused for a second and cracked up. 

As the week wore on, it became a little more bearable, as a cross-breeze kicked up.  However it blew from lane one across to lane eight.   Speaking of lanes, every sprint event has had their complaints about favorites lanes.  This event was no different. Lane one was the favorite lane.  By midweek, lane one had became so noticeable that someone got out the computer and computed that lane one had already accumulated 67% of all victories with about a 12 second advantage over lane eight.  Trees and tents sheltered the wind from lane one. The force of the wind disproportionately affected the lanes with the outside lanes receiving the most velocity. 

As the grumbling grew louder, a complaint was filed suggesting the fairest thing would be to omit lane one.  The officials convened and decided to keep the same format.  The officials not only kept lane one, but also decided to award lane one, to the teams with the fastest qualifying times on the day of the finals. One can only imagine what happened at finals. It made lane one the, “Gold Lane.” It was a gift of insurmountable advantage. As an old ex-race committee chairman I helped seed many championship races.  The standard was to place the fastest in the middle lanes, then proportionally toward the outside. 

The Tahitians and the New Zealanders were the fastest of all.  They really put on a display of superb paddling from the youngest to the oldest.  Most of their stroke rates were in the 90 strokes per minute at the start and settled to, “Oh about 85.”  They looked synchronized too, even at the highest stroke rate.  The first day, they blew everyone away.  My golden masters team was three strokes behind before we even started. We were still in our slow, hard stroke mode. Then after breaking down videotapes we began to adjust our stroke and refine our starts and turns.  No one was allowed to practice once the races began, so each team took their mistakes from the previous race and refined it during the next.  Each day we became faster and better as we learned while getting, “A dirty licking.”   By Thursday we had caught up as much as were could.  Still the Tahitians, New Zealanders and a few others were always holding the lead.

 Everyone was impressed with the handling of the check- in stations, the lineups and the starts.  On the first day it was difficult to understand the announcer’s beautiful, but thick accent, as their primary language was French and Tahitian.  They always gave three announcements to check in for your upcoming race. Everything was announced in English, French and/or Tahitian. The first day and a half, I thought the announcer was saying something to the effect of, “Golden Masters, Cora too, line seebin, eat too, peddler’s chicken.”   By the second day I figured out she was saying, “Golden Masters, SCORA 2, lane 7, heat 2, paddlers check-in.”  In fact one of the Newport Aquatic Center kids asked her mom Karen Poppler, “Why are they always asking about a chicken?”

The attendance was very large.  There must have been several thousand people in attendence.  The competitors ranged in ages from young teenagers to about 70 plus. It was good to see young kids playing, swimming, and mothers watching their kids at the same time, young and old preparing for their heats.  It was truly a sport that encompassed everyone.  Even the Park Rangers were impressed at the amount of paddlers involved.  I don’t think they’ve experienced such a large draw of competitors even though many competitive events are held there regularly. By the way, the rangers were right on.  Whenever there was a problem, they responded immediately.  A few paddlers passed out from the heat combined with the exertion of competition.  The Rangers, Paramedics and Firemen were there within a few minutes. 

On the first day of the week we gathered at the town square for a parade of competitors.  The paddlers paraded about four or five abreast bearing their country’s flag.  We had paddlers from England, France, Tahiti, New Caledonia, Fiji, Italy, Germany, United States, New Zealand, Australia, Japan, Canada, and many more, which I can’t recall.  The parade stretched out, finally wrapping around the end of town in a square where dignitaries and officials gave their speeches, mixed with traditional dances from several countries, including the American Northwest Indians.  The young men of New Zealand with their Haka war dance performed the best dance. Also a group of young men and women performed a terrific dance to rap music, which was a real hit with not only the teenagers, but everyone.

Talking to my old friend Harry Ho, whom I raced against decades ago, but never spent time to really get to know each other.  He said at age eight he used to paddle for the renowned Kai Opua Canoe Club in Kona Hawaii.  Harry lived near the well-known Kanuha family, who were instrumental in coaching and guiding Kai Opua through decades of success. His dad worked for Standard Oil on the Kailua dock filling up fishing boats.  He also worked at the service station near it.  After his dad was transferred to Honolulu, young Harry joined Hui Nalu Canoe Club. There were only seven clubs in existence then.  Everyone raced Koa boats and everyone practiced in Koa boats.  The first fiberglass canoe had a clear bottom with no pigment and one could see through it, which was cool with Harry and the kids.  When the war came all paddling stopped, because the military had to protect the shoreline after the attack on Pearl Harbor. Harry and friends were so small the coaches put two kids side by side on each seat with a wooden soda water crate on the floor so their feet could touch. He said, “One of my grandfathers was the Judge, the Mayor, the Sheriff, the coroner, the everything in Kailua Kona.  His name was John Ho’opali.  There is a statue of him in a church in Kona.”

Harry is half Chinese, quarter Hawaiian and quarter Haole (Caucasian).”  Harry’s grandmother Nancy Aldridge Parker ran away with his (other) grandfather, a Chinese guy fresh off the boat from Canton China. Her family owned Parker ranch.  It was a big scandal. Word was they wanted to lynch him, so he headed for Honolulu’s Chinatown to escape.  He lived to a ripe old age of 97 and had seven million dollars when he died.  Harry said, “Grandpa had several restaurants, and also was a loan shark in China town. He also had a store.  It was a place where customers brought their (land) deeds and not come back to pay him.  So he had all these deeds lying all over the place. Grandpa helped out a lot of people and eventually the Chinese gave him the title of Ho Pui Ke, which was a title of great importance.”

Grandmother Nancy spoke Hawaiian, two dialects of Chinese, Cantonese and Mandarin, German, French, Italian and was educated on the east coast.   When Harry’s mom and dad retired they moved to California to live out their lives, but Harry elected to stay in Hawaii and live with grandmother. She took care of him and sent him to school in California, but his heart was always with Hawaii and soon returned to stay and take care of grandma. One could see that besides his mom and dad, his grandmother had the greatest influence on his life. As he admiringly spoke of her I could sense the passion in his voice, “I wanted to see my grandmother and take care of her. She is getting on in years.”  With the ending of Harry’s story, the crowd began to cheer as I watched a new drama begin to fold, perhaps not as colorful as Harry’s, but every bit as memorable.

Julie Wolfe of SCORA entered 10 races and brought home many medals.  We actually don’t remember the count, but we certainly were impressed by her performance. During one heat she was so far ahead (Lane 1) that she paddled the last 30 yards so slow we thought it was just a warm-up.  She, in turn, said she was a little embarrassed to take the win and kept looking around to see where was everyone.  At the awards, she and Jeanne Barrett who also did well, kept receiving their awards walking off stage and walking back on again in a big circle. 

Everyday we listened for our heats to be announced, while keeping busy and making sure we were ready to race.  The waiting was unbearable. Meanwhile after eating lunch, there’s no place to really lie down. I yearned to be home in my own bed. One day I was so sleepy, I took a cardboard box and walked far away from the crowd.  I opened it up, spread it on the bank of the lake and fell asleep.  I woke up to some kids swimming and staring at me. They probably thought I was homeless.   I stashed my cardboard bed in the bushes for the next nap, so the rangers wouldn’t take it.  As I did it, I really felt like a homeless person.

A team of Adaptive paddlers competed in the World Sprints.  Some had spinal injuries, kneecap missing, leg impairment and other disabilities. But as long as they could somehow hold a paddle it did not stop them from competing and representing Hawaii.  Many used their wheel chairs to get to the canoe, where someone would carry them in and out.    Once they were on their way, they were as tough as nails. I could see the sparkle in their eyes and the same intensity prior to competition.  It was pretty encouraging to watch them prepare for races with the same intensity as the rest of the paddlers.  I know their quality of life and health improved the moment they joined a club.

Six years ago at age 60 Aka started Project Pure Light for recreation in Kailua Oahu.  After a while people came up to him asking to go to the next level, which was real competition.  That was the beginning. With that came funding and the next level. Pure Light coach Aka said the adaptive teams combined with non-adaptive teams to represent Hawaii’s contingency.   Hawaii scored approximately 30 medals, 25 or so were gold, many of which came from the adaptive teams.  “We have a blind paddler, a gal with one arm with hook. A gal with arms short to the elbows. Spinal injuries. The camaraderie is unshakeable and the shortcoming of one teammate is compensated by another teammate’s abilities.   There is no easy stuff here, no baby-sitting.  We work hard, we work together and are expected to do what we can do.”  

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Thanks to the staff and officials of the World Sprints.  They did a terrific job organizing everything.  Many names aren’t mentioned here, but our appreciation is still felt in our hearts.  Most of all, thanks to all the paddlers from all the nations.  It was our own version of the Olympics and we were all proud to represent our sport, ourselves and our country. 

Photography: Many thanks to Mike McKinney for the hundreds of photos taken. McKinney's hobby is photography and supplied many of the shots I needed all season.



Mahalo  Al