The Olympic Legacy?

[PeterC]

All is not well with our sport at the moment and John expresses much sense. The time and effort that our Baldockbabe commits to her volunteer work for slalom is well above and beyond and is appreciated by most although perhaps not some of the feline fraternity. She should take comfort that the vast majority of us have no truck with the comments made anonymously.

Seedy your comments re current issues in Scotland are on the mark, however the isolation you feel in the Windy City is felt in many other areas of heather land. Happy to discuss further off line.

Something does rankle about the tag line "Valuing Volunteers".........

[DavidDickson]

Seedy, the sca performance director has taken little interest in the good work that goes on in central belt too. He has been to Alva twice, once on his first day in post (18 months ago) when the CEO brought him along to a training night and 6 months ago when he came to a winter mini slalom to introduce the tayside and fife performance coach.....

[SilverSurfer]

Firstly, it was great to see an update from Elaine on the progress being made at LVWWC on the UK Canoe Slalom web site, and no one can doubt LVWWC is an excellent venue. Whilst the overall message is very positive, and clearly many people have been busy in the background, there are still unanswered questions for me:

“The vision for Lee Valley is to be the Elite Performance Centre for our talented athletes and to build a lasting legacy from the Olympic Games providing for those from beginners to elite level.”

Question 1: Where does this leave HPP in Nottingham and the athletes who are currently based there, combining their studies/paddling?

“In total, an investment of £1.7m to enable a club and elite facility to be developed alongside the further investment by LVRPA on the site makes for an exciting opportunity to capitalise on the legacy from this iconic Olympic venue .... and a robust commercial business strategy by the LVRPA, the Lee Valley White Water Centre is in the unique position of being able to demonstrate a real Olympic legacy in the spirit that the Olympic bid was won in, back in 2005.”

Question 2: The investment made is great, but I wouldn’t call it a robust commercial business strategy, given the price hike in entry fees to secure the Premier/British Open race there. How will this be addressed in future years to be a true legacy?

“Everyone in the outside world is pleased to see a legacy plan being implemented in our sport and a future home for British sport being provided at one of the most iconic Olympic Venues. We have had lots of media coverage over the last few months, including features in the Daily Telegraph, on BBC TV, ITV TV Radio 5Live and multiple local media and broadcast mentions. This has provided a great platform to showcase how open and exciting our sport is, and to encourage people to participate or be involved in supporting those that do.”

Question 3: If that is the case, why is there no investment/support for the cost of running the Premier/British Open race there?

“In August this year GB Canoeing’s Coach Development Officer, Mike Chandler, coordinated a slalom-specific training course for 12 canoe coaches in the South. Increasing the number of coaches and then the slalom-specific knowledge they have is crucial to developing our sport so we were very pleased to see the high levels of interest in taking this course. The day ran successfully and the coaches had a great time. Some of those involved are already taking up the additional opportunity offered, the chance to shadow the GB Canoeing Coaches in their work.”

Question 4: This is great news, but what initiatives are out there for other areas? I’m sure there are many new and experienced coaches out there who would like to shadow the GB canoeing coaches to further their knowledge and experience.

[John Sturgess]

At last, information on what is happening Legacy-wise at Lee Valley: Thanks, Elaine.

However it confirms the suspicion I expressed in my post of August 23rd: that much of the misunderstanding on this thread has arisen from two different views of what a Club is. The giveaway is the figure of £1.7m. Clubs do not cost anything to set up - tho' they will cost money to run (usually comes from the members) and they might need outside funding for developing a suitable facility.

The £1.7m is clearly for a facility for the elite squads - nothing wrong with that, but not in itself a club. Augsburg (2), Prague, Bourg, Bratislava, Liptovsky, all have clubs on site which anyone can go and join. Seo, Athens (obviously), Dutch Water Dreams, Cardiff don't. I do not know about Markleeburg or Beijing ...

HPP has a Club, but the only club facility is a fenced-off boat storage area. Same with Green Star. Stafford & Stone, Manchester, Salisbury have nice club-houses; Bala certainly used to; Bradford & Bingley and Halifax have boat storage and changing; I don't know of any of the Scottish clubs having their own premises.

So ... nice but not necessary ...

[PeterC]

John - CR Cats have their own facilities and course at Alva. They may have very great similarity to escaped shipping containers but very useful!!!

[Neil H]

Firstly, it was great to see an update from Elaine on the progress being made at LVWWC on the UK Canoe Slalom web site, and no one can doubt LVWWC is an excellent venue. Whilst the overall message is very positive, and clearly many people have been busy in the background, there are still unanswered questions for me:

“The vision for Lee Valley is to be the Elite Performance Centre for our talented athletes and to build a lasting legacy from the Olympic Games providing for those from beginners to elite level.”

.

Well this post has turned into something else and it has been alluded to that all is not well with the sport. Saddened to read the posts re Scotland shenanigans obviously. I agree with Silver Surfer's comments as above, which is surprising as I know him and I wouldn't normally agree with him based on that alone (THIS IS HUMOUR.)
I would think it would be best for the sport and the future if all the young athletes who have committed for so long were getting equal treatment and coaching wherever they may be.

[AndrewG]

I would think it would be best for the sport and the future if all the young athletes who have committed for so long were getting equal treatment and coaching wherever they may be.

Comrade Neil, in principal I agree, but I believe the reality is this will never happen in a competitive sport with limited funds and more so one where geographical location can have a significant impact on access to relevant training venues, races and coaching (to any Cornish residents on this forum "Chons da!").

To misquote Orwell:
All young athletes are equal but some young athletes are more equal than others?

Personally, I believe that the changes made in England this year are an improvement on prior years although I appreciate the changeover might have caused some issues for young athletes previously supported ("readjustment" of rations).
As Squealer would have explained:
"Comrades, you do not imagine, I hope, that we [add name of group of athletes that you believe have disproportionate allocation of resources - lets call them "pigs" for the sake of argument] pigs are doing this in a spirit of selfishness and privilege? Many of us actually dislike regular coaching and variation in training venue. I dislike them myself. Our sole object in taking these things is to preserve the health of the sport...........It is for YOUR sake that we have these advantages."



(one blade good, two blades better?)

Stil trying to put together an alternative 7 commandments:
1.?
2.?
3. No young athlete shall wear normal clothes
4. No young athlete shall sleep in their own bed
5. No young athlete shall drink alcohol
6. No young athlete shall kill any other young athlete (although I would make exceptions)
7. All young athletes are equal

[Neil H]

Should have gone to specsavers

How about

no young athlete shall share a double room with a parent

I can't argue with a man who quotes the mighty Eric. Read Down and Out in Paris and London comrade and then we can talk about equality.

7 - but some are more equal than others

I think William Wilberforce wavered but he persisted to make the world the lovely place we live in today

You might need a bit of belief adjustment young man - a visit from The Belief Police is in order (very Orwellian.)

[davidpbain]

Well after a long time I have finally got through all of this...

I think its simple. Without participation we do not have a sport, let alone a sport thats cool as it deserves to be!

The kids on talent ID have a fantastic opportunity! No disagreement there, its great and could have a few of them being potential olympic medal winners. I also think that it is great what GB Canoeing have done here setting up such an efficient coaching system to get kids on such a rapid progression at learning to be slalom kayakers.

So my opinion on talent Id; I have 20 kids all who are the correct somatotype to be elite (Vara and Molmenti have the same body build?) if we say that 50% get bored and 25% get injured prior to their senior career starting then we have 5 kids who can be potential olympic medal winners bringing funding in to canoe slalom Thats great, but surely just having a successful elite few does not make a successful sport? We need to do more than talent Id to increase participation.

The alternative/something additional to this is we get 100 kids paddling. I believe a similar percentage change will happen over the 8-10 year time span. If someone wishes to do the math that leaves a greater percentage of people enjoying slalom canoeing, with the top 5 still included there winning medals.

I have spent a lot of time this year traveling around Europe to creeking venues and slalom sites offering coaching and skills sessions and the one thing that seems to happen in mainland Europe is loads of kids are paddling and loving it! There are some slalom clubs that do have great participation levels but it is in not UK wide by any means.

There also some people that have offered monumental amounts of time to the sport in increasing participation often voluntary or with a small salary rightly or wrongly some of these people over the years have been forced out. This is completely wrong and angers me massively, they should be thanked and begged to continue and encourage others to do the same and help get kids in boats! I would love to think that the SCA have a plan of how to keeping young people coming in to canoe slalom, I guess I will keep hoping and wait and see.


I hope no one takes this as a personal attack ect as it is really not meant to be such,

Cheers,

Bainer

David Bain


P.s. Anyone here slating John should think about his commitment to the sport first. I for one would not be paddling if it had not been for him...

Oh also using a hashtag on canoe slalom forum is not only saddening but also completely unacceptable