July 3, 2008
 

Dear Wildwater Racers and Friends:

Wild Water USA has secured an order of 15 Wavehoppers for the U.S. See if the first article for more information.

On the international scene, the 2008 USA Senior Wildwater Team participated in the 2008 Wildwater World Championships in Ivrea, Italy. Our athletes went 5 for 5 in the Masters races. John Pinyerd was 1st and Michael Harris was 3rd in C1. In K1, Chris Hipgrave and Maurizio Tognacci came in second in their classes and David Jones was 3rd in his. In the Senior Classic race, we have 2 racers place within 10% of the winning time in their class - Tom Wier (8.3%) and Tiereny O'Sullivan (8.43%). Check out John Pinyerd's article for more about the World Wildwater Championships.

Next, we bring you an article by Chris Hipgrave from the World Cup 1 and 2 events, followed by the results from World Cup 3 and 4 and the 2008 World Cup rankings.

The good folks at FIBArk hosted the USA Western Junior Wildwater Team Trials a couple weeks ago, in conjuntion with the Wildwater Series and the 60th runnning of the FIBArk 26 Mile Downriver Race. Geoff Calhoun won the downriver race -- he has won every FIBArk Downriver race that he has entered (2005, 2007 and 2008). We have the results of the Team Trials and the Downriver race in the list of articles below.

Finally, we have the 2007 USA Wildwater Rankings (thanks to Rob Murphy) and an article about the 2008 USA Wildwater Rankings -- the methodology being used to do the rankings and the results-to-date.

I hope that you are all planning on being at the USA Wildwater Nationals that are being hosted by Zoar Outdoors in Charlemont, MA. Zoar and the USA Wildwater Committee (Seth Eisner) have worked really hard to come up with a WEEK long National celebration and Wildwater event. A great link for information is: www.usawildwater.com/news/2008/080609_nationals.html.

Chuck Brabec
Editor & Webmaster, USAWildwater.com