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< May, June 2000
	Features
Triumph and Tragedy at the 1999 World Rodeo Championships Joe Carberry

"Can we get some people into boats and into the water? A girl just went under and we haven't been able to locate her." It was the third time Dan Gavere's words echoed over the loudspeaker, and they had just begun to affect the crowd gathered at the World Rodeo Championships at the Full James Wave near Taupo, New Zealand.

Kayaks filled with boaters in mismatched gear quickly spread across the water looking like confused hounds that had just lost a scent. They were searching for 24-year-old Irish team member Niamh Tomkins, who disappeared while swimming in between the semi-finals and finals on Sunday. "Move out onto the cliff and try to get a look down into the river," Gavere's voice boomed again as he tried to get spectators, standing on an overhanging cliff, to join in the search.

The people on the ledge began to yell frantically; they found what they were looking for. Two of the paddlers then dove for the girl and were able to get her to shore and start CPR. Unfortunately, their rescue efforts came too late. Tomkins died that afternoon on the banks of the Waikato River.

It's been a while since I had this feeling... tears that won't come, a rock in my stomach. Today a girl drowned in the Full James rapid. To fully comprehend how this accident could have happened, you have to understand the features of this rapid. It's an incredibly deep river flowing at 6,000 cfs. The vortexes on the eddyline create dynamic whirlpools that can suck you toward the bottom. Just yesterday, Clay Wright was practicing mystery moves in his squirt boat and encountered one of these vortexes. He said the pull was so strong it scared him. Given the circumstances, it was amazing to see how fast the entire paddling community came together. As you can imagine, finals have been postponed until tomorrow. Organizers met with the Maori tribe this evening to discuss the situation. According to Maori tradition, if a person dies on the river it is considered sacred until the river has been blessed and deemed safe again. Had they chose not to bless the river, the event could have been stopped and the results would have stood with the semi-finals. All of the participating countries met and took a vote to see whether the event should continue. It was the Irish team's suggestion that the event continue in memory of their fallen teammate. --V.G.

Two centuries earlier, the original inhabitants of the country, the Maori, used a cave near the Full James to lay their own dead to rest before taking them to a burial area. The cave was known as Rua Hoatu and occupied a special place in their hearts.

This, of course, made gaining access to the land difficult for the New Zealand Freestyle Kayak Committee (NZFKC), which organized and hosted the competition. The NZFKC submitted a proposal to use the land to the Iwi, the Maori tribe living in the area, in August 1998. The committee didn't receive approval until August 10, 1999, less than four months before the competition was to start.

Organizers couldn't blame the Iwi for prolonging the decision to grant permission; it was sacred land. The tribe had also learned a tough lesson on how their land could be misused. In the1950s a Taupo man known as Mr. Full James built a lodge near the wave and charged people to take boat rides through the rapid. This infuriated the Iwi. Today members of the tribe still refuse to call it the Full James Rapid. Instead, they call it Ngaawapurua, meaning "where the river divides," so named because before the Aratiatia dam was built, two miles upstream of the play wave, the water would get low enough to expose a rock dividing the river into channels.

There was a chill in the air this morning and everyone was anxious to get the competition started. As the Maori gave their official blessing, everyone huddled in their fleece, excited that the World Freestyle Kayaking Championship was about to start. To the Maori, all nature is alive and has magic or supernatural powers. They live in harmony with the land and respect it as property of the gods. In the early days, the Maori had no written language so they passed their history through song and dance. Today, we were able to share in that history as the Maori sang and gave their blessings to all of the kayakers who came to Ngaawaparua Rapids (AKA Full James). --V.G.

Competitors wished the blessing would've effected Mighty River Power, owners of Aratiatia Dam, so water levels would have been more consistent. As it was, levels changed faster than you could drain your bathtub, making it hard to train and even harder to compete.

A few foreign competitors showed up four weeks beforehand to get a feel for the wave. Tents and vans spread across the surrounding meadow where competitors created ways to avoid the downpours inevitable during the New Zealand spring. Despite the abundant rain, the river was too low, limiting practice times to the whims of the dam operators. Early in the morning you could catch kayakers sneaking out of their tents and into their boating gear, shouldering kayaks and making a mad dash into the fog coming off the water, in hopes of catching an uncrowded surf.

Pitter, patter, pitter, patter. That's what we wake to. The rain has moved in again and has not stopped, even for a second. The gear we hung out to dry overnight is now more soaked than before. The scene at the Full James site is dreary and wet. Everyone is hibernating in their tents or has left to crash at any dry place in town. A lot of people have dispersed to other parts of the island to paddle. We have opted to spend the day relaxing. This will probably be our last chance to do so before the madness kicks in. As two-time World Rodeo C-1 Champion Allen Braswell puts it, "This is the best type of training you can do. Relax the body, close your eyes and visualize." We plan to sit in front of the telly (Kiwi for television) and let Allen Braswell show us the finer elements to his style of training. With the competition just three days away, practice time is becoming more and more vital. If anyone has connections with the Kiwi Dam people, now would be the time to use them. A little bit of leaning would do the Worlds some good.--V.G.

As the event drew nearer, uncrowded surfs became a luxury as competitors crammed into the eddy like ants at a sugar spill anytime there was water. With the rain, you would assume there would've been plenty of water to release from the dam to make the wave useable. But the opposite was true. "Because the dams are commercial, they release water only when they can make money," said event secretary Andi Uhl. "With the South Island experiencing monsoons, dams there could generate power cheaply. The North Island dams weren't interested in competing."

Water has been slim at best. The weather has come in cycles of pouring rain to beautiful sunshine. Just recently the organizers posted a training schedule that gives each country 1.5 hours of practice time per day, hoping the dam people will cooperate. The athletes are definitely focused, and antsy about the lack of practice time. But, everyone understands the problem. Prior to the training schedule, athletes would camp out by the river just in case the water came up. If it did, they would hit the river, even if it was 2 a.m. The organizers were smart enough to provide flood lights so athletes could paddle in the dark. --V.G.

When officials discovered the river would run at the right level for 24 hours, they set up strobe lights to allow for night training. Looking upriver in the dark, all you could see was a glowing silhouette, as competitors cartwheeled themselves into the night. Each country had certain time slots it could use for practice. At times, tension ran higher than the water. At one point, the Swiss team filed a formal complaint against the U.S., who it claimed stayed on the wave 10 minutes past the team's deadline.

Luckily the Full James wasn't competitors' only paddling option. Between the North and South Islands is enough whitewater to keep even the most hardcore addict from feeling withdrawal symptoms. When they weren't training at Full James, competitors flocked to such nearby classics as the Kaituna, Huka Falls and Wairoa. Others took part in such other Kiwi mainstays as bungee jumping, skydiving and jetboating. Whenever the water came to Full James, however, they quickly returned to battle eddies and sample the contest site.

There is a river god! Water was finally released today (though it was two hours behind schedule). There were surges of good and bad. On some, paddlers were ripping—throwing blunts, cartwheels and clean spins. On others, the wave just opened up, resulting in pretty hard face plants. The attainment is hard and some people definitely get worked—which puts them at risk of losing their cherished place in line. Others grab onto the undercut and pull themselves into the top eddy. All of the Kiwis keep saying, "She'll be right" which roughly translates to, "Things aren't going as smoothly as we'd like but it will all work out in the end." I admit, it's come to be one of my favorite sayings. --V.G.

The Worlds also gave competitors the chance to sample the latest playboats from the world's major kayak manufacturers. When water levels and abilities worked together, competitors took the new designs to task, showcasing moves they had been working on all year. Brooke Winger took advantage of the new models as well as anyone, taking third in Women's K-1 and capturing first in women's squirt. "I was pretty excited about my squirt performance," Brooke said. "And it gave me some strong confidence heading into the surface boats competition."

Perhaps the biggest surprise of the competition was the absence of Eric Jackson in the men's championship round. Jackson threw a massive aerial blunt in the quarter-finals but flushed with surging water levels on his two semi-final rides. Those close to the bank heard him call-out his move of the millennium just before throwing it. "What I said specifically was, 'Watch this, I'm going to do a big move!' But I didn't know what I was going to do," he says.

The water was slow in coming this morning. As I sat and watched the calm pool transform into a raging rapid, I was hypnotized by all of the features—the floating rocks that mysteriously surfaced from the bottom of the river, the pulses of water that made the wave become more retentive. Looking back on today's events, it seems as if the water was foreshadowing how the day would play out—slow to start but raging with excitement later on. Eventually, spirits and clouds lifted as the event got underway. It was a fierce competition. Single elimination starts with the top five competitors in each class, with every person allowed one ride. The lowest ride determines who gets left behind in the next round. This process goes on until there are only two competitors left. The person with the highest score wins. It's nerve-wracking as a spectator. I can't imagine what it's like as a competitor. --V.G.

Solitary big moves, however, didn't carry the same weight as consistency. And no one was more stable than Eric Southwick, who rode the river's inconsistent flows to a first-place finish in Men's K-1. "I just tried to be really consistent," he said. "The wave was flushy so you had to be aggressive but you also had to be patient. You really needed to pay attention to the pulse. Every time I went out there, I hit it. The water made it harder but you just had to adjust."

"That wave had one of the hardest features I'd ever seen," added competitor Aleta Miller, who finished fourth in women's K-1. "It surged so much—and the water levels were never the same."

Corran Addison felt that the surges separated the skill level of the paddlers. "It was an unpredictable spot," he said. "But it was good, because that separated the people who just threw ends and those who were constantly reading the water. I always looked upstream for boils coming down and if I saw one, then I did something else until it passed by."

Southwick apparently read the water a little better than Addison on the day of the finals as he threw a split wheel with three seconds left to win the title, relegating Addison to second and fellow South African countryman Steve Fisher to third. "I knew I needed something at the end of my ride because Corran had done so well," Southwick said. "A split has a higher variety and technical score, so when I heard the 10-second buzzer go off, I set up for left hand cartwheels, looked for the timely placement for the split, and then let it all hang out."

Other competitors letting it all hang out include Deb Pinniger of Great Britain, who took the women's K-1 crown; Great Britain's Mark Birkbeck, who won the K-1 Men's Juniors; and Andy Beddingfield from the U.S., who left Down Under with the Squirt division title.

For all in attendance, however, everything from the results to the rain proved secondary in light of the tragedy that unfolded before the finals. The Irish lost a team member, and everyone else lost a cherished paddling friend. If the gray, New Zealand clouds did offer a silver lining, it was that a valuable lesson was learned by all—to live life to the utmost every possible moment. And whether they were dancing on tables at the Holy Cow bar, driving to nearby rivers to playboat with friends, or grasping at an undercut while waiting a turn to surf, everyone did exactly that, living life it to its fullest at Full James.

Today's weather seems indicative of everyone's mood...overcast, chilly and somewhat hazy. While we have all traveled thousands of miles to celebrate the World Championships, we can't forget that this raging water below us claimed a girl's life yesterday. It changed the mood and spirit of everyone. No one wants to forget because yesterday was one of life's most valuable lessons. It was a reminder of how precious every second can be. --V.G.