Since I’m back on the water this week after a couple of months of winter off, I thought it would be good to take the Tip of the Week out of the gym and onto the water. I also thought it would be cool
to do this one as a sort of tribute to my childhood hero, John Wood, who lost his life just a little over two years ago. You can read about John in a post I made in January 2013, John Wood (1950-2013).
John was the first Canadian canoeist in a couple of generations to break onto the Olympic podium when he won his silver medal in the C1 500m at the 1976 Olympics in Montreal. I had only just started paddling C1 so he immediately became my hero. Later he became a good friend as well, and was always willing to provide sage advice as I was trying to win my own Olympic medal.
Since I’m back on the water this week after a couple of months of winter off, I thought it would be good to take the Tip of the Week out of the gym and onto the water. I also thought it would be cool
to do this one as a sort of tribute to my childhood hero, John Wood, who lost his life just a little over two years ago. You can read about John in a post I made in January 2013, John Wood (1950-2013).
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| John Wood 1976 Olympic Silver Medallist in C1 |
John was the first Canadian canoeist in a couple of generations to break onto the Olympic podium when he won his silver medal in the C1 500m at the 1976 Olympics in Montreal. I had only just started paddling C1 so he immediately became my hero. Later he became a good friend as well, and was always willing to provide sage advice as I was trying to win my own Olympic medal.
I remember one of the things he told me was
to always have a piece of wet sandpaper in my boat. He explained that you always want to make
sure the shaft of your paddle isn’t slippery when you’re about to race, and
that sometimes there’s stuff in the water like oil or gasoline that, if they get
on the shaft of the paddle are going to make it hard to hold on to.
I’ve had my bottom hand slip on the paddle
at the catch in training, and since my catch is usually pretty heavily loaded
suddenly the paddle that I expect to support my body weight isn’t there. The result, predictably, is a face plant into
the water. If this happens in training
it is embarrassing and inconvenient. If
it happens in a race it is a disaster.
Fortunately it never happened to me in a canoe race because I always had
that little piece of wet sandpaper tucked under my kneeling block. Before every race I’d just give the paddle
shaft a quick sand and would be ready to go, confident that my hand wasn’t
going to slip.
It was only after John died that I heard a
cool story about his 1976 silver medal-winning race. A couple of minutes before the start he and
the eight other finalists were circling nervously above the start line waiting
for the call to the starting blocks.
John noticed one of the other competitors struggling with his grip on a
very obviously slippery paddle. Just
before they got into the starting blocks, John offered him his piece of wet
sandpaper which the competitor took with thanks, and used to get rid of
whatever was making his paddle shaft slippery.
The race started and John had the race of his life, winning his silver
and narrowly missing the gold. When he
looked across to see who had edged him at the finish he saw Alexander Rogov of
the Soviet Union, the same paddler he had offered his wet sandpaper to.
In SUP paddling we’re just as likely to
find the shaft of our paddle covered in something that makes it slippery as we
are in canoe. We’ve got it a little
easier than Olympic canoeists because if we’re racing on the ocean the sand on
the beach is never far away. A handful
of beach sand does a great job of taking anything off your paddle shaft that
might make it slippery. You can use it
to get anything (like sunscreen for example) off your hands as well. But since our board shorts all have pockets,
why not slip in a small piece (say 3”x3”) of 200 to 400 grit wet
sandpaper? You’ll be covered if you
don’t have time to get back to the beach to get some sand, and if you’re racing
in a location with no beach sand you’ll be ready as well.
