Month: April 2017

River Stench Repots: Flying freestylers high on helium

Recent reports from the Nottingham area suggest that local legend and Holme Pierpoint regular Rob Crowe has been inhaling helium to loop larger than ever before. Some are calling this the latest in a long line of doping scandals while others are stating it is merely the next progression in a rapidly developing sport.
Rob Crowe, who has had an impressive year in 2016 becoming the UKs #1 freestyle paddler and joining the Peak UK team had this to say on the matter: “Years ago I was tricked into believing Jackson were developing helium airbags, which was pretty embarrassing. However since then I started to think that it wasn’t such a stupid idea.”

Over the next few years Rob then put his product design degree to good use attempting to develop the fabled airbags with help from other UK based kayakers Gav Barker and Bren Orton. All was reportedly going well untill Bren, holding onto an over sized over thruster, was lifted up into the upper atmosphere and never heard from again. Later it would emerge that he had eventually touched down in Canada where he was raised by a pack of ‘Demshitz’, but sadly both the helium and airbags were shelved due to safety concerns.

That is until now. “I just thought if I inhaled the gas I could just exhale to control my altitude!” explained Rob in a comically high pitched voice. “As a freestyle kayaker I spend half of my time upside down anyway. So there really isn’t any point in that frivolously breathing oxygen thing.”

Of course this isn’t the first time that freestyle kayakers have inhaled gas in an attempt to get high. Years ago when freestyle was merely regarded as creative capsizing rather than competitive upside-down-ness there were numerous rumours of paddlers getting stoned just before events. This of course eventually led to squirt boating.

Rob Crowe was piped to first place last year at the Nottingham Freestyle League (NFL) by ex-colleague Gav Barker. With the event starting again on 14th of april, Rob is hoping that his recent innovations will be the silver bullet he needs to win the prestigious competition. However, Gav had this squeak on the matter: “Rob lacks vision. I mean, Helium was so 3 relative atomic masses ago. We need to look to the future”.

Gav has not been seen since premtively celebrating his victory with flaming tequila shots.

RIVER STENCH REPORTS: Latest ICF Sprint Changes

Athletes are up in paws as the ICF once again has notified them of a last minute change to the scheduled events. Controversy was sparked earlier in April, when the announcement came that events for canoe sprint world championships in Racice, Czech Republic would be changed. These changes ensured gender equality for men and women by giving both an equal number of events, but still making sure the women wouldn’t paddle as far.

The new change, however, is set to make waves amongst both the Sprint and wider Olympic communities as the ICF attempts to make sprint ‘hip and cool again’ according to their latest press release.  The press release states that the change was prompted when high level officials suddenly realised that sprint canoeing is ‘kinda dull’ and ‘basically just rowing but forwards’. 

The change to the world championship line up involves removing almost all traditional events and replacing it with the ‘C2 and a dog’ category that was introduced to the prestigious Barrow Race on new year’s day. The new category takes place across all the standard sprint distances with longer 1000m races requiring a mandatory sandwich break, where the competitors lunches will be assessed by none other than Mary Berry. Sandwich brakes are optional across 500m and 200m races, but highly recommended. Yorkshire tea are already looking to sponsor the event.

When questioned as to why the Sprint events weren’t being replaced with other more established disciplines such as marathon, surfski or even polo, ICF officials said they wanted events that better represented the wider canoeing community. Upon further inspection this apparently consists of a majority of beardy boaters in open canoes, half of which are called Brian.

Current East midlands champions Ralph Beardmore, Kay Ward and their dog, Monty, were ecstatic to hear news of the recent changes. “We’ve had some lovely holidays paddling around the lake district so we’re very excited to get this opportunity to pootle around in some other places too” remarked Beardmore. Monty released a statement saying: “woof”.

River Stench asked some current sprinters whose events had been axed, what they made of the changes: “It is a real shame” said one. “You spend months and months training for an event only to have it pulled away by some bureaucrat” he continued. “Then again I never really liked canoeing which is why I picked sprint. I mean it’s fantastic, you barely have to spend any time on the water”. Still he admitted that while he did indeed hate kayaking, he did love dogs and may just pick up the new category because of this.

In fact British Canoeing have already reported a boom in participation numbers with the selection event for the new ‘C2 and dog’ squad having a larger turnout than any canoeing event ever. The new category really does seem to have hit a chord with the public and is even drawing some big names such as ‘Devon’ who won ‘Best in Show’ this year at Crufts. The selection events, held over 327m, 2k with 5 turns and a tea break, were a huge success and a SIS squad for the new category has already been formed consisting largely of the coaches’ families and friends. Bucket practice was available early in the morning but these were recruited later in the day for washing down boats with sponges.

While these changes by the ICF may be highly controversial with some members of the sprinting community it does seem to be having a positive effect on paddle sports as a whole. Plus everyone is in agreement on something, at least it isn’t SUP.