Unofficial UK Slalom BBS

I'm afraid that I'm not a solicitor, otherwise I would have been more than happy to offer some free advice to the Slalom Committee should they want it. However I have worked with and for solicitors in the past, thus have some knowledge of how the system works. I would agree strongly that if the Slal...

Hi JJ, Talking about problems that are probably not as big as they look, I think that this also applies to the health & safety issue and the possibility of litigation. My impression has been that generally speaking judges in the UK have not gone down the American route and have thrown out obviously ...

Sorry JJ but I totally disagree with 'sanitising' natural rivers just to make them 'safe' for slalom. The vast majority of the people that run the Dee and Town Falls are recreational river runners during the course of a year and part of the experience of running Town Falls is avoiding the slot or wo...

Leaving aside other more general safety issues raised in this thread, the solution to the original post seems very simple to me. Enforce the rules and disqualify paddlers if they don't abide by them. If you aren't prepared to use the sanctions available, then don't be surprised if the rules get flou...

I'd like pay praise where it is due and thank the slalom committee for finally recognising that there is an issue here and doing something pro-active to try and rectify it. There is no "perceived" about it - I would challenge anyone to demonstrate that the division 2 race calendar has in any way bee...

Duncan, it seems to me that you're 'fixing' the statistics to suit your argument rather than the other way around. The 2016 calendar is there for everyone to see and it's not rocket science to work out how many div 4 races are combined with div 3 ones. Assuming that all div 3/4s are being run on som...

Most division 3s are run on flat or nearly flat water, so I don't see the issue. In fact out of the 71 div 4s in the calendar for this season, 48 are 3/4s, and I'm assuming on the same course (I've left out Llandysul races on the lake and shortened courses mentioned in the calendar). Thus if div 4s ...

I would change the relationship between division 4 and the ranking system for a start. As the person who compiles the very unofficial div 4 rankings I have some insight into retention and it's not good. Only around 30% of participants remaining in div 4 at the end of one season come back to paddle a...

I couldn't agree more Dave. As a div 2 paddler of mature years that has over 20 years of river running experience at grade 3, 4, 4+ and even bits of 5, the div 2 calendar of races last year was pathetic in terms of white water content and meant that I reduced the number of races I entered to only ab...

In that case BC's position is inconsistent and the question the Slalom Committee should be asking the powers that be is why the Event Safety 'diktat' is not being applied to all competition disciplines in which BC has an organising hand.

Cheers,
James

I'm all in favour of increasing capacity generally across the whole of the ranking system. The more paddlers the stronger the competition and thus the stronger the sport. But before we get into specifics around increasing capacity, let's define the capacity problem. As far as I'm aware, no other div...

I've long since stopped kidding myself that we are an environmentally friendly sport. While the actual paddling on natural rivers is sustainable, the increasing use of pumped artificial courses + the hundreds/thousands of miles each of us drives each year in pursuit of our sport is not.

Cheers,
James

Interestingly, if you go to the recreational paddlers main forum on the UKRGB site, you'll find plenty of threads complaining that the BCU only spends its money on the competition elements of the sport. If they are not spending on either recreational or competitive paddlers, it begs the question, wh...

No slalom paddler should have to travel abroad to be able to experience decent courses on challenging water. If that is the implication of a recent post on this thread then that would suggest to me that there is something seriously wrong with slalom in the UK. Incidently, I have paddled in France, S...

Given the devastation wreaked on the div 2 race calendar for this year in terms of challenging water, I'm really not very sympathetic to div 1 paddlers whinging about entries. At least you've got some decent water to compete on as long as you get your entry in early enough. My concerns over the port...