Whitewater U.S. Open on Nantahala gets athletes psyched for Olympics

Karen Chávez

Michal Smolen can't stop thinking about London — and it has nothing to do with a royal wedding.

For the 17-year-old competitive kayaker — who plans a whitewater three-peat this weekend — it's all about honing his paddling skills on the road to the 2012 Summer Olympics.

On Saturday and Sunday, Smolen and some of the top whitewater athletes in the United States and Canada will compete in the Bank of America Whitewater U.S. Open on the Nantahala River, one of the first major races of the whitewater paddling season.

“I'm looking to go to the Olympics in 2012,” said Smolen, a member of the Swain County-based Nantahala Racing Club who grew up in Sylva and now lives in Charlotte with his father and coach, Rafal Smolen.

Michal Smolen, a junior men's kayak racer, won the season-opening Glacier Breaker in February on the Nantahala, in both the junior and senior men's divisions. Last weekend he also won the March Slalom Race at the U.S. National Whitewater Center in Charlotte.

“I'm feeling pretty good about racing on the Nantahala this weekend,” he said.

Lee Leibfarth, one of the organizers of the U.S. Open, which is being hosted by the NRC and taking place on the campus of the Nantahala Outdoor Center, said Smolen is definitely a paddler to watch.

“This is crunch time for the top athletes,” Leibfarth said. “Because next year is an Olympic year, it's important for these athletes to get prepared and get international competition. Their minds are definitely on getting to the Olympics.”

While there is still a long road between the U.S. Open and the Summer Olympics in London, this race is an important step. It sets paddlers up for the U.S. Team Trials April 15-17 at the Whitewater Center in Charlotte, which will determine if they get to go to Europe this summer for international competition with the world's best, all on the road to making next year's U.S. Olympic Team.

Rafal Smolen, head coach of the NRC, and an Olympic coach, said getting onto the U.S. team this year is very important looking toward London.

“The whole process of making the Olympic team is quite long,” he said. “If they make the national team, they will compete at the World Championships this summer in Slovakia, where athletes will try to qualify a spot for the U.S. in London.”

Rafal said his son is maturing as a paddler and could have a good shot at the U.S. team, although making the Olympics might be a challenge since Michal, who was born in Poland, is not yet a U.S. citizen.

“I have my eyes on the Olympics,” Michal Smolen said. “I just keep training and racing and just with the focus that I'm going to go to the Olympics.”

Double the racing

There will be plenty of competition for him at the U.S. Open, which has two racing components: slalom and downriver, also known as “wildwater.”

In slalom, whitewater kayakers and canoeists take two runs down a quarter-mile stretch of river, negotiating about 20 upstream and downstream “gates” as they go.

“The goal is to be as fast and clean as possible,” Leibfarth said, which means churning their paddles as quickly as they can, while trying not to touch or miss any gates and incurring time penalties.

This year, the gates, which are poles suspended above the river with numbers, will only have one pole, as opposed to the two-poled gates, in accordance with new International Canoe Federation standards, Leibfarth said.

“Athletes can now get their boats closer to vertical when they're negotiating the gates,” he said. “They used to have to keep their boats as flat as possible. This creates a more dynamic style of racing.”

After two runs on Saturday, the boats are re-seeded and the finals take place on Sunday.

Racing like river torpedoes

In the wildwater race, also known as downriver racing, the U.S. Open will double as the U.S. Junior Team Trials, said Chris Hipgrave, race director.

“Wildwater is all about getting from Point A to Point B as fast as you can,” said Hipgrave, also a member of the U.S. Wildwater Team. “There are no gates, no mandatory moves.”

Although the discipline is not an Olympic sport, Hipgrave said “it has a toe in the door of the Olympics,” and continues to grow in participation each year.

There will be two kinds of wildwater racing this weekend. On Saturday is a sprint race, which is about 100 seconds long, Hipgrave said, and on Sunday, is a classic wildwater race, which is 2-1/4 miles long, and will take the speediest paddlers about 10 minutes to complete.

Spectators will get a view at some of the top junior and senior wildwater athletes in the country, although the race is open to all paddlers. The boats will be easy to distinguish from the slalom vessels, Hipgrave said.

“Slalom boats are designed to turn really well to go through gates,” he said. “Wildwater boats are meant to not turn. They're really long and narrow, up to 15 feet long, with lots of volume. They look like torpedoes.”

“This is a great opportunity to see a high level competition,” Leibfarth said. “There is a deck above the river where spectators can see the race all the way from the top to the bottom. There aren't many rivers in the country where you can do that.”