Jackson Kayak News

Freestyle was suffering from a lack of the big moves being done in competition in the past two years because it was safer to do the cartwheel moves and rack up technical points to over power the big tricks scores. In 2004 the USFKA lead by my wife Kristine, with the input of any freestyle boater that was interested, Clay Wright, Shane Benedict, Jay Kincaid, and myself scrapped the technical part of freestyle and focused on “Variety Only” system. This means that the only thing that scores in freestyle is individual moves, and you only get scored for a move once. The harder the move, the more points it is worth. The goal is to have enough emphasis on the harder moves to make it more attractive to try to “Go Big” if you want to win, than to “go small and fast”. In the first event in California, the system only scored your “top 5 moves”. The move only counted if you stuck it. What happened was a sad display of everybody doing the same 5 moves, and taking their sweet time to do them. It was neither fun or a good competition. Kristine had the 5 move limit lifted after talking with all participants and at the American Festival it was a much better event with the whole 45 seconds being used for moves. However, any Big Move was still too risky to try unless you were sure you would stick it so the really tough moves still weren’t happening. Nothing harder than an air loop was even tried, that was still not achieving our goal.

The next weekend- Bob’s Hole Rodeo was the breakthrough!!!! A 6 point completion bonus for all moves from the Air Loop and harder was added. This combined with awarding the competitor the points for any of the hard moves that they hit, but flushed on, put enough of an incentive to try the hard moves because of the high scores you get when you stick them, plus the safety of at least getting scored for any of the moves completed, even if they flush. The result: Donkey Flips, Helix, Felix, Air Loops, Pan Am, Clean Back Stabs, etc. etc. and a very exciting event! As a competitor, I could start to show my hardest moves during competition and those competitors who were good at one trick but didn’t have the full range of hard moves, found themselves training again to learn the hard moves. Right now is a very exciting time to be a competitor in Freestyle in the USA!!!

What is a rodeo like now with the new system?

Well, just look at the top three place rides at Reno, FIBARK, and Bob’s Hole. Before these new rules you could count on one hand the number of kayakers in the world who could do moves such as the Lunar Orbit, McNasty, Phonix Monkey, etc. In the last two weeks, kayakers who are known to be leaders in freestyle are finding that they have lots of work to do to learn new moves and be able to hit them in competition. The plateau has been busted wide open and the curve is going straight up again. The McNasty is the Air Loop of three years ago. The Lunar Orbit is the Tricky Woo of three years ago, The Phonix Monkey is the Space Godzilla of two years ago. And this is just the hole moves. The same will happen on the wave competitions. Last year doing all of your air blunts and then getting ends was the best plan for a wave competition. Now- it is every hard move, and stick it, or lose, WOW! Want to know who has all of the moves on a wave or in a hole? Just watch the competitions! What about those athletes that can do the same hard move but go BIG? We have a “Big” and a “Huge” bonus that can be added to any of the moves that have a competition bonus (hard moves).

What is the down side? Right now the IFC (International Freestyle Committee), which Kristine is Vice-Chair of is not keeping up to date and it is likely that the upcoming World Championships will not have this system in place. The Committee wanted the USA to develop a new system to replace the existing one and everybody had an opinion of what would work well. Like with anything- a great idea needs to be developed, tested, and then redeveloped until the bugs are worked out. The current status of the USFKA system is now only in need of very minor tuning. The scoring sheets, exact value of each move, and the method of using the clean, big, or huge bonus still needs some work when it comes to judge training, etc. If the Committee acts quickly enough, and votes on it, we could have the best world championships ever, with people like Andy from Australia (who did the biggest loops ever) getting credit for his huge moves. My fear is that the IFC will either not act for this world championships, or worse, give into the idea of making the world championships a more “festival atmosphere” and not take the competitive side of the event seriously enough. There are a group of people who think our sport is not attractive to the spectators and media. The primary missing ingredient for spectators is immediate scores, and the current rank of the athlete, along with the athletes doing the latest, hardest, most spectacular moves. The new system is perfect for that, with calculators no longer needed, and the math is simple addition of the move scores.

Judging: The crazy thing is that athletes that were competitive last year, but haven’t been around this year, can’t just sit in and judge without training. The Phonix Monkey was invented just this year, the McNasty last year, the Lunar Orbit last year, but all have only been seen in competition for the first time this year!

Want to see what these moves look like? Click on these links: I will put up a video of my rides at Salida from this past weekend if you want to see what a “new school” rodeo ride looks like. It was my goal in these rides to only do moves on the top of the list.

McNasty

Phonix Monkey

Lunar Orbit: coming soon

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