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| Dustin Urban of Buena Vista finished the World Cup of Freestyle Kayaking as the bronze medal winner Sunday. Perter Csonka of Slovakia won top honors followed by Nick Troutman of Canada.
Photo by Katie Urban
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| Dustin Urban completes a freestyle kayak move in Germany. The course he was competing on is man-made, built for the 1972 Olympics. Urban finished the three-stop word cup tour Sunday in third place.
Photos by Katie Urban
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Buena Vista kayaker third in world cup
by Christopher Kolomitz
Mail Managing Editor
Dustin Urban of Buena Vista finished the World Cup of Freestyle Kayaking as the bronze medal winner Sunday in Thun, Switzerland.
Urban entered the final leg of the three stop competition in second place.
Peter Csonka of Slovakia won the top world cup honors followed by Canadian Nick Troutman in second.
Troutman won the Thun stop which pushed him into second position ahead of Urban.
The world cup event began Aug. 15 in Prague, Czech Republic. Second stop was in Augsburg, Germany before the finish in Thun. There were 89 competitors.
In women's competition, American Emily Jackson placed first overall followed by Ruth Gordon, Canada and Fiona Jarvie, Great Britain.
Traveling with Urban is fellow Buena Vista kayaker and brother-in-law, Jed Selby.
Selby was a member of the U.S. team attending the competition and finished 17th in the Thun semi-finals. In world cup competition Selby placed in the top 20. Also, at Thun, Selby placed second in the big trick competition.
Also with Urban is his wife, Katie, and Jed's girlfriend Kennley. The group camped during most of the trip and traveled via rental car.
Following is an exchange between The Mail and Urban who was writing from Champerey, Switzerland, Sunday. The group will return to the U.S. Friday.
The Mail: What are your thoughts about finishing third? Are you bummed? Humbled? Stoked?
Urban: I am very happy with third. I was most concerned about the final event in Thun since it was on a wave and I haven't paddled on a wave much in a while. So, I was very happy to make top five.
I would have liked to hold onto my second place spot in the world cup, but Nick Troutman and Stephen Wright were on another level in finals.
Peter, Mathieu and I (the other three in finals) couldn't touch their scores in the 900s. They deserved first and second. I would have liked to place a bit better, but I'm really happy I held onto the top three.
The Mail: How about current world champion Eric Jackson not making top three?
Urban: That was definitely a surprise, but he was a good sport about it.
It highlighted some controversy around the judging system in Thun. Many people felt the judges were too strict in awarding tricks.
But, the fact EJ didn't make top five is testament to just how challenging the wave was.
It was easy to flush off the wave on any given move, and at that point your ride was over. Unlike the features in Augsburg and Prague, you couldn't paddle back up the eddy and onto the wave in Thun.
That was what happened to EJ on his first semifinals ride, and that was what happened to me on all three rides in the finals. It took an incredible amount of skill and poise to pull out rides like Nick and Stephen did. They deserved it.
The Mail: Is the level of competition throughout the world getting better? Are there bigger tricks?
Urban: I'd say so. Many of the moves being thrown in the World Cup have been around for a couple years, but they are now be executed more cleanly and more consistently.
Some of the newest moves we're seeing are combo moves like the Blunt-McNasty which is scored as a 200-point trophy move.
In the Salida hole I have hit triple combos like the Air Loop to Lunar Orbit to McNasty. It's a flurry of moves that takes less than five seconds, but it takes the right kind of hole, and I haven't seen any combos like this in competition.
The Mail: Is competing on man-made versus natural courses different?
Urban: It can be. Prague was the essence of an artificial course, and you could really feel it.
The feel of the hole was pretty unnatural and the water behaved in a pretty odd way.
But spots like the Salida and BV holes have a much more natural feel. It just depends on the design and the materials used.
Natural granite like that used in our whitewater parks makes for a more natural feel than the wood, concrete or rubber tires used in Prague.
That said, whitewater courses like that in Prague are still a fantastic amenity for the local boaters.
The Mail: What moves were scoring the most points for you?
Urban: At all three events, the McNasty (also known as the 180-loop) was one of the highest-scoring moves for me and other competitors.
In Prague and Augsburg, the Phoenix Monkey (aka the 360-loop) was the highest scoring move for us. In Thun, I was able to hit the Blunt-McNasty combo in semifinals to score 200 points.
The Mail: Was it tiring to travel from place to place and then compete in three rounds?
Urban: Certainly. It took a lot of physical and mental endurance to be at my top performance for nearly a month straight.
As one of three competitors to make top five at every event, I took a total of 32 competition rides during the course of the World Cup. There is definitely a sense of relief to being done and having done well.
The Mail: How did you get your boats to Europe and then to other locations?
Urban: We flew with Lufthansa on a direct flight from Denver to Munich. The direct flight is important since it reduces the chance of the airline losing or misplacing the boats.
We chose Lufthansa since they're one of the few remaining airlines that will even accept a kayak. It's always a gamble when you get to check-in with kayaks.
I've been charged as much as $250 one way on an international flight. This time around the Lufthansa folks were very casual about the fact that if we were under our baggage limit and our bags were under the weight limit, that would be fine.
So that was a definite bonus not to be charged on the way over.
Once in Europe we rented a car for boat and gear transport. We just sold our boats at the last event so we wouldn't have to fly them home (plus they fetch a much better price in Europe).
The Mail: What's new this year and what's on the horizon? Any innovations with gear or boats?
Urban: Ultimately the next big leap forward will definitely be in the realm of boat materials.
Most boats today are linear or crosslink plastic, but there were a number of composite boats at the World Cup made by a french company.
Using carbon, kevlar and fiberglass, they are producing boats as light as 18 pounds. I think we'll start seeing more companies producing composite boats, and this will undoubtedly cause a lot of innovation in the freestyle realm.
Not only are the boats much lighter, they're also much stiffer, which is especially important on a wave.
Plastic always has some flex, which makes the boat slower. Around 10 years ago we saw the first planing hull boats coming out which caused a major evolution in freestyle.
I think composite boats will cause a similar revolution in the next year or two.
The Mail: What are your thoughts about FIBArk and PaddleFest attracting some of these of the competitors, like the Jacksons, Ruth Gordon? What's that say about the level of the play parks and river in Chaffee County?
Urban: The Colorado competition circuit is quite unique because it is the only series of competitive events within such a small area remaining in North America.
For people like the Jacksons and others serious about competing, Colorado is the place to be in late May and early June.
This speaks volumes of the quality of whitewater and the whitewater parks in Chaffee County.
Between the consistency of the snowmelt and the increased number of excellent features in our whitewater parks, the Arkansas River will become an even more popular destination for freestyle boaters serious about training and competing.
The Mail: Looks like your side trip to the Swiss mountains was amazing. Does Chaffee County compare?
Urban: The Alps are truly amazing and Chaffee County absolutely compares.
Some of the differences here are the differential in elevation from valley floor to mountain top. Chaffee County has a differential of about 6,000 feet, whereas it's about 10,000 feet in places here.
Plus there's so much bedrock and limestone in the mountains here that there are more jagged peaks and vertical faces. Also, the presence of glaciers is quite different.
That said, I absolutely love the mountains where we live, and we are super excited to be coming home soon.
For kayaking in particular, Chaffee County is really unique, and we talked to many Europeans who are now excited to come to Colorado during snowmelt in the near future.
Colorado in general and Chaffee County in particular is definitely a world-class kayaking destination, and paddlers from across the globe are aware of that.
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