Dan,

Over the past 10 years I have seen many National level wildwater events piggy-backed onto festivals or other large profile events.  I agree that is presents an attractive strategy for increasing participation, but my perception is that not a single one of these events has broadened the appeal of wildwater or increased participation outside of the event itself.  In some cases wildwater paddles have felt marginalized at these larger events by a lack of focus on their event, which is often something that have been focusing on for an extended period of time.  Does this mean that piggy backing is bad thing - no.  However, it is clear that this strategy that we have been using for nearly 10 years now is not working and we need to figure out a way to get the most of of these events so people become interested in staying on to paddle wildwater outside of the event.  In addition, some of these events are not geographically located in areas in which it is actually possible to race regularly.  The Deerfield Nationals were on an awesome course in a great area, but there is no domestic racing for many hours in any direction.  The same is true for Fibark, where the number of wildwater ranking races has declined significantly in the past few years to the point where, outside of the high schools, there is no wildwater paddler base.  Thus, even though people may paddle at a high profile event they cannot follow up by racing more.  In most parts of the country we suffer from a severe lack of races which can engage people - even in the South East where wildwater is arguably strongest in the country pretty much ALL of the races are on a single river.  What is the solution?  I don't know, but what we have done in the past (e.g. simple piggy-backing) is not working.  I value these discussions and think that as many folks as possible should weigh in, but we do have to be realistic.  There are probably less than 25 people in the country who are training regularly in a wildwater boat and they are spread across 4 time zones with no easy way to coordinate or increase participation.  I'm a glass half empty kind of guy, but I don't see that things are getting better. 

Now I expect to be flamed on this, so go for it.

Chris