Last September, 90 competitors gathered in Jonquiere, Quebec, for the World Cup of Rafting and Pan American Rafting Championships. Raft guides, kayakers and dirtbags from around the world attempted to stake a claim amongst the world’s rafting elite and jockey for position in the 2013 World Rafting Championships to be held in November in New Zealand.
This sounds strange if you’re used to paddling rivers where guides are pushing rubber. You’ve probably spent time waiting in an eddy for your chance at a surf or been stuck behind a slow-moving crowd while they plug across the flats. We’re used to seeing commercial rafts crawl along at tourists’ pace, but rafting is also an internationally competitive sport. It even made appearances at the Olympic Games in Munich in ’72, Barcelona in ’92 and Atlanta in ‘96. All this thanks to the Cold War.
A boom in whitewater tourism in the early 1980s spawned athletes with new skills. The first widely recognized competitive rafting event came in ‘89 through the work of Project RAFT (Russians and Americans For Teamwork)-an attempt to overcome Cold War-era political divide between the two countries. Teams came together on the Chuya River in Siberia to compete in downriver and slalom disciplines.
The event was well received by many and continued until it folded in ‘94. With the help of Camel cigarettes, Tony Hansen, who would go on to help found the International Rafting Federation (IRF), put together…
This article appeared in Rapid, Spring 2013. Download our free iPad/iPhone/iPod Touch App or Android App or read the rest here.
