Is it time for some outside the box thinking?

[Arrowcraft]

I understand that there are containers full of almost brand new British Canoeing boats, paddles and equipment at HPP and Lee Valley that get used for about 4-6 weeks a year, just rotting away.

With almost no funding, I bet I could get 3 groups of 12 kids into those boats 3 nights a week for for a minimal charge and get them started in slalom canoeing. 36 kids, 3 sessions a week is 108 (say 100) paddle sessions at £3.00 a go is £300 / week revenue for a 12 week program is £3,600 revenue.

Pay that revenue to a Team Athlete to run the coaching (Give them a job and give them all the money thereby supporting the athlete) after 12 weeks, get the kids racing at Div's and then transition them into clubs or if HPP is full, create another one. Then repeat...4 times a year, possibly do it in school groups and get an inter-schools thing going...that's about 212 new paddlers a year entering div 4 using just 12 of the currently rdry and rotting away British Canoeing boats.

After the 12 weeks, the kids can either stay with their team ( or School team) and pay their slightly increased £5.00 a session fee (to the coach) and keep going or they can go into playboating, sprint, WWR or just touring.

Imagine of the British Canoeing boats were actually used to get people into the sport at HPP, Lee Valley, Tully, Halifax, Manchester etc.

Stone, llandyssull, Wye Dean are the only ones I can see building new paddlers...

It's not hard...but it does compete with the squad system which is focussed on getting in money from Sport England and then justifying it...not developing the sport..I ran a slalom squad a ta club a few years ago and my kids were just as competitive as the TID paddlers and I did it for free and everyone had a great time. Podiums were often shared between Lee Valley TID / Nottingham TID / my paddlers / Stone /. Dyssul / wyedean.

It's hard to justify the huge money spent on one system, when a new. little club in the midlands is matching the system for free. 3 of my paddlers ended up on squads and we talked about the nonsense that they were filling the kids with. Elitist crap about the squads being the only way so when they dropped out of the squads...they dropped out of the sport.

If we want to rebuild...and we need to rebuild and take our sport back from the nonsense that is currently killing it...

1. Get kids paddling and having fun
2. Stop filling their heads with nonsense
3. Recirculate small fees into prem athletes to provide them with a small income that will help keep them in the sport.

AND

4. Re value Prem. Make the courses harder, more technical and use more whitewater. Use more natural locations as well as courses...more exciting and stop dumbing it down to accommodate the kids and attract more grown up racers, reduce the fees and costs AND THEN

5. Get Premier races on free to air TV

Leave the Sport England money to fund whatever the GB team want to do...waste on Lee Valley water time for 30 paddlers probably and all the legions of coaches that accompany them. Use the membership money to develop a racing system in the UK that is sustainable and produces an ever growing number of new entrants.

[paddlerparent]

Perhaps approach BC directly?

[Arrowcraft]

Unfortunately. BC are the custodians of the policies that have created the death of the sport. Going to them directly will have no effect. Ask them if there is a problem and they will say that their athletes are winning medals and they are following a formulae that works. And of course it DOES work. Get some kids at 12, coach them everyday in a ruthlessly high attrition rate state funded program for 10 years and they should be in finals and on podiums.

But at the cost of the rest of the sport of canoe slalom. BC are too busy patting themselves on the back to worry about the decline in entries. If they need more athletes, they can farm them in The Program. They can create their own performance pyramid, control the entire process including who they they get to compete against and the quality of that opposition by controlling resources and access to training. Which they do very well.

As a sport, we need to focus on engagement and new entrants. As a national body, BC need to focus on results to justify their budgets. These are not compatible positions...the proof is clear.

[Steve Holmes]

And we’ve lost another div 2 and another div 1 in the North of England.

Musings on the season so far:

Events have been run, mostly brilliantly, by great teams of great people - thank you.
4 div 2s have been cancelled so far and a div 1.
All of the 4 races cancelled were accessible for paddlers in the North of England and 3 for Scottish paddlers.

There seem to be good numbers of div 2 paddlers (particularly K1W) at events, but when you dive deeper overall numbers are well down. Only 36 K1W have raced so far this year, 30 of them were at Symonds Yat.

Div 1 numbers are down, but we knew that.

The Pan Celtic ran at Cardiff and will run at Bala. My thought is that for it to work well it needs more flexibility in the divisional system. J14 should be at a div 1 as some of the best paddlers won’t go to a div 2 just for the Pan Celtic, but ideally at a div 1/2. Looking at the rankings then J16 should be at a P/1 (I know we’re in a post Covid slump though). The England Talent Scheme doesn’t seem to hold the Pan Celtic in high regard as they’ve scheduled a Slalom School on the same day.

I am not convinced by holding the junior selection at Lee Valley. To me it seems incredibly Lee Valley centric in the approach. And I may be wrong here but will the Junior international courses be the same standard as the Senior ones? Should we hold the senior selection and junior selection on the same course? Justification: looking at the junior GB teams’ performance at HPP prem in the J18 categories. K1M - Sat 4th, 10th, 16th - Sun 2, 8, DNS. K1W - Sat 1st, 3rd, 5th - Sun 3rd, 6th, 9th. C1 were closer to 1,2,3, but a lack of strength in depth (particularly in C1W). I don’t want to take anything away from the J18s that made the team, but I think a little thought needs to be applied here.

Meanwhile I’ll do an inventory of our boats at Marple, try to get some more kids in, and hope they go to races!

Edit - I know the selection thing is off topic but I do feel it is needing discussion in the future.

[JimW]

I'm gutted about the loss of 2 more races, although my wallet probably isn't. Actually 3 more - Seaton Park 3/4 has gone too.

There is no doubt the loss of div 2 races in the north contributed to our record entry for Pinkston 2/3 despite the enhanced entry fee I set on the expectation of about 2/3 the normal entry. By the way, the record div 2/3 entry was about half what a div 1 entry used to be, but the site felt quite busy enough. We are really struggling for venues in Scotland now, Persley has come on line nicely (now with camping) but Aberdeen is too far away even for most of the north of England, and to be honest I'm seriously worried about AKC, it is mostly the div 2 dads left paddling there, they are really struggling to get new paddlers of any age. Fairnilee should not be a permanent loss, but it will need to be run differently in future and neither of the 2 most local clubs have the experience or number of helpers to do it. Unfortunately I'm not aware of any discussions about anyone taking them on next year (remembering that we are well into the calendar application period) - there is too much focus on trying to replace one of them for this year, again I am seriously worried about that, if things can't get resolved quickly for the replacement to be advertised, everyone will have booked holidays away and there will be a shortage of competitors and helpers. Do continue to watch this space, but it may be that nothing actually appears.

I despair at PCC at Bala mill div 2. I can't face that drive for that race course, I might for chapel falls. Don't think Scotland will have any vets racing there. I don't see any higher division juniors entered as open (I assume there is an open entry option) for the champs either.

Also take in the point about growing the grass roots and encouraging not just young kids, but teenagers and adults and in particular teenagers and adults who already have WW experience and it starts to look more and more like we should be grading the sites/races and allowing anyone to enter the races that best suit them. If you want to have a divisional structure within that, select divisions somehow based on points accrued and rank people within divisions for bibs (so we can continue to have lots of different colours with repeat numbers). Keep the promotion points at the levels they are now, but grade races A to D, 2000pts available at A races down to 250 for D races and anyone who achieves promotion points from best 5 gets promoted mid season, and at end of season anyone who didn't manage to accrue the number of points for promotion from the lower division is demoted. So you can either do harder races with potential to score better (risk of scoring less) or do some easier races to ensure enough points, but ultimately you should end up sorting all paddlers more evenly, and do away the issue of having to design race courses to suit multiple divisions, because the course would be graded and it is up to paddlers which grade of course they want to take on, rather than having to go to easier (or harder) races than they want to because those are the ones currently dictated as being for their division.

It then opens up all races to all paddlers, so instead of running out of div 2 paddlers, there could still be div 3 and div 1 and unranked paddlers entering to make the races more viable. At Pinkston we could run 2 or 3 grades of race on the same day (I've already listed why 3 is impractical in the current set up) so where in the past we have had issues with: a) adults forced to paddle 1 pump because they are still div 3 and PU is not permitted at 2/3 races, b) recently promoted div 2's not happy to race on 2 pumps and not entering (or pulling out of Sunday if promoted mid weekend), under such a system they can simply enter the grade of race they are happier with, and it is unlikely to distort their points score.

So who can think all this through fully and come up with a proposal?

[Arrowcraft]

It's pretty straightforward. Not popular, particularly with some parents...but straightforward.

The Program that self feeds the successful high performance pyramid system at the moment is NOT compatible with developing the sport and participation. If you understand anything about The Program, then you will realise that every paddler not in the program is a competitor to the program and potentially undermines their existence. the Program neither wants, nor needs a vibrant divisional system, but whatever is there needs to be comprehensively beaten to justify all the money they spend on it. They will beat you on the water and off it. That is it's fundamental objective. To produce the elite athletes for the team at all costs. They don't want athletes coming out of the program to compete against them...which is why most ex program kids leave the sport, not just the program. The facts are there, staring you in the face. Open your eyes and see them.

It's time to do something different as a sport...or get involved in a different sport.

This time next year, numbers will have halved again if we carry on as we are.

Most of the parents of kids in the program at the moment, will be doing something different this time next year. 32 kids will not fit into 12 places. Happens every year...The kids will leave the sport, not just the program.

I have no axe to grind here. I have no athlete in the pool and no long term interest to preserve. I've been involved in canoeing since 1983 and think it is a great sport...British Canoeing has messed slalom up completely three times in my lifetime, to the point that it is almost died...It will recover, if we do something different. Then BC will screw it up again no doubt.

Just remember. You don't need BC to run slaloms. Only BC ranked events. HOLD ON TO THAT THOUGHT. Stuff the ranking system and the nonsense around it and the squads and the myriad of wasted talent, time and money. DO CANOEING COMPETITION DIFFERENTLY. with different objectives, different goals and a different system. Different VALUES. And lets get kids canoeing again. The only thing you need BC for is water licenses and insurance. Stuff the rest of it.

[mac8251]

afternoon all
my name is dave pinson i own Arrowcraft composite eng ltd , it was brought to my attention that there is a user on here who goes by the user name of Arrowcraft ,
i must stress that some of his points are valid but they have nothing to do with the official company of Arrowcraft composites ltd
regards
dave

[Arrowcraft]

Yeah. Sorry Dave, Been trying to change this username. I emailed them again this morning.

[Arrowcraft]

Will close this one down and try and get a different one.

[mac8251]

thanks , much appreciated

[Rick]

so who is the contributor formerly known as Arrowcraft?

I share many of those views.

At The Sharks we introduce many people (adults as much as children) to paddling and to slalom racing, with a low cost, pay-per-session approach to support coaching at every session.
This season has provided many div3/4 race opportunities within 2-3 hours of our Harefield base. Fewer for our div2 racers.
We run our own race for div4/open in October (not sure why its not on calendar yet). The Harefield sluices can provide challenging water, made suitable for novices by setting courses with choices of routes. We don't apply to run higher div races there only because hanging min 18 gates is tricky - we only need 12 gates to set a challenging 100 sec course (ask Bradley F-C). We use stopwatches and 2 officials (ie a starter/finisher and a judge) and paper scorecards, and keep it informal and fun.
We've not yet had the issue of a paddler making it onto a squad, but hope to, and would hope to still be involved in their development.
Of the ideas aired so far, I'd support doing away with demotion.
I'd like to try running a slalom race on an 'all-round' basis where racers compete in K1 , C1 and C2 with final position determined by placings in all 3 classes (if the Olympics was run on that basis it would have saved C2, without increasing athlete numbers or medal count, and would raise standards at grass roots level as paddlers would want to try all classes, and develop better for it). Maybe a big cash prize at the Harefield open would attract some racers to this race format !

[Arrowcraft]

LOL. Some say that he only eats Walnuts and Californian raisins and likes playing with life size lego. But we call him the Stig.

[Dee]

Yeah. Sorry Dave, Been trying to change this username. I emailed them again this morning.

In the meantime, you could edit your signature to say that you do not represent Arrowcraft

Look for user name near top right of page, click on it to go to profile and edit signature

[SteveM]

Hi, Steve (Board admin) here.

It looks like PMs aren’t working properly on the board so will the artist fka Arrowcraft email me at stephen @ Giveitfish.co.uk and I’ll sort out the name. I have emailed earlier using the email saved on the Board - maybe it’s not current any more?

Anyway, awesome thread and very interesting even to a long since since ex paddler like me. For my contribution I’ll say that back in the day me and my friends all entered slaloms for fun paddling, fun camping weekends away and because of a keen interpersonal rivalry.

We never had any intention of fighting for top honours but we were there supporting the sport for years and became a set of experienced paddlers the youngsters had to learn how to beat on their way to the top. I’d say whatever changes are made the fun at grassroots level needs to be considered alongside the drive for pure competition, and for us that meant enjoying races all the way up to Div 2.

[Nick Penfold]

Some will get more points, some fewer. Adding more paddlers to the calculation changes the step size for the points difference between places so at the top end paddlers (host and PU) except 1st will make a gain, and the lower end they will lose. If you only concentrate on the promotion end it is easy to ignore lower end points as not mattering, but to paddlers possibly hovering on the demotion limit they might be important.

Taking the Llandysul Saturday K1W race and calculating the points for all paddlers as if all were Div 1s has the effect of increasing the points of every paddler but one (the last-placed paddle up).

Applying the same to the other classes, only a handful of paddlers at the very bottom of the results lists lose points, and most gain. I haven't tried the same exercise with enough other races but it looks as if almost everyone would benefit.