Leck,

I agree with you about the media coverage issue. I wrote a note to
Wayner last week about the feasibility of multi discipline events
like you mention. There is great potential for synergy if we
mobilize and integrate to some degree, different whitewater
disciplines.

A few thousand folks showed up at the Upper Ocoee for the
recent 'Ocoee River Days', I missed the hoopla as these things are
not my personal cup of tea. I did paddle there and witness the
numbers. It proved that you can get lots of people who know little
about slalom/downriver/freestyle to travel to the Upper Ocoee ...
it's important to recognize that if WE were to get them to show up,
we would need to have a multifaceted plan to get them back again.
Food, music, variety of 'things', maybe even something as goofy as a
raffle, where you get a competitor's bib number ... they win, you
win (newbies might pay closer attention). Maybe at EOD after the
big events, do a short downriver, head to head raft race with
(guided) spectators as the racers (involvement & appreciation of big
water)! OK, OK, so I'm not the greatest idea guy ... but that's
what the group is here for!

Promotion of citizen level races, possibly multi discipline events,
could be leveraged by teaming up with a deserving charity (and it's
associated marketing team), can you spell 'volunteers galore'? This
would potentially be a winner for everyone. I personally have run
in 5K races, ONLY because they had a worthy charity benefiting from
some of the proceeds ... and I've shamed others into doing it also.
I have done about 5 5K running races, it's kind of fun, but 4 of
them were charity races!

I know many, if not all serious racers will pooh pooh this multi
discipline idea and a 'circus' atmosphere. How do the Euros bring
people out to races? I've seen video with impressive numbers of
spectators in Europe and in Brazil.

I think as a group we can do many great things for slalom. I also
think much of it will to need to be somewhat planned and sequential,
hence the particular polls recently created on wwslalom. My
personal opinion is that one of (if not the) first steps is to
achieve 'critical mass'. I don't think we are there now.

Anyone else on wwslalom have thoughts about this?

..ajm




--- In wwslalom@yahoogroups.com, "leckyh" <leckyh@y...> wrote:
> Hey,
> Big kudos to Larry Mashburn who has been a big factor for
> years! A true friend of slalom and also a true friend of the
river.
> I agree with Joe to some extent about making a big media
effort
> to draw a crowd and sponsorship and TV for the races. My question
> however is, How do we get more athletes to have a bigger race than
> say, 60 competitors? How many are we going to have for the Olympic
> trials next year? Probably less than 100.
> Maybe we should also have a downriver challenge and a rodeo
> like we did a few years ago. That brings more paddlers into the
> scene and may make it more of a "family of boaters" affair than
just
> a "snooty" slalom racerhead deal. With shortened slalom races like
> they are today, there is also plenty of river there to share with
> the DR racers and rodeo afficionados, as well as for the cruisers
> and rafters.
> If we want to draw media and have a bunch of athletes we
might
> want to try this instead of ending up with 10 women, 14 C-1's, 4 C-
> 2's and 30 kayaks for a slalom race. (oops! that's less than 60!).
> Just throwing in my buck fifty!
> Oh, and Sam, Congrats on your second National Championship Gold
> Medal in C-1 Slalom (just a few more to go to catch Davey :-)
>
> Lecky