Post
by Canadian Paddler » Thu Nov 22, 2018 6:10 pm
Lots of individual things:
Thanks Alison, even if not linked to rules, the page of changes would be useful, although in Extreme Slalom the time trial is timed with beams.
At ICF Level Slalom has taken on what was going to be Slalom X but became Extreme Slalom when it went through ICF Congress.
Chris: IOC has said no more athletes at the Olympics, so to bring in Polo we would have to lose enough athlete places from sprint AND slalom to make a contest viable, AND keep it global, so drop slalom completely and you could just about have a competition between a team from each continent. Not exactly thrilling. It is NOT possible to give 'a lot more' paddlers the chance to compete at the Olympics, there is a fixed number of athlete places.
Similarly there is a fixed number of medals (IOC saying not going to increase overall medal numbers). So if extreme-canoe-slalom-boater-X is to be included we need to give up other medals, and either use paddlers already competing at sprint or slalom, or give up some places from these disciplines. However IOC has said it wants to review each medal to see if it matches their brief. If we look like losing sprint medals, Extreme slalom is in a good place to offer an alternative that ticks a lot of ICF boxes and could keep the number of canoeing medal, and yes extending slalom events is easier than bringing in another discipline.
In the UK we are trying to work cross discipline, and with existing boater cross organisers to try to select some prople to give them the opportunity to compete internationally, and have the chance to be World Cup and World Champions. But these are run to ICF rules so it seems sensible to have a set of UK rules to match. Will all boater X use Slalom X rules - I doubt it, and have no problem with that, do we want to force them to do so, No, why would we?
ICF Focus on sprint is (in my opinion) down to the fact that there are more nations doing sprint than slalom. Then sprint and slalom have a larger voice than other disiplnes as (cynical I know) as beign Olympic they bring in more money.
JimW 'with the limited experience' refers to the limited experience of trying to run ICF style competitions, not the experience in running boater X.
All spelling errors are intentional and are there to show new and improved ways of spelling old words. Grammatical errors are due to too many English classes/teachers.
Old. Fat. Slow. Bad tempered. And those are my good points