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.