THE EVOLUTION OF FREESTYLE KAYAKING
WRITTEN THESIS
Jesse Metzger
May 2014
Newton North High School CAPStone Research Program
INTRODUCTION
The idea to focus my CAPS research project on whitewater kayaking came to me some time in the early winter of 2013. With very few other ideas, I did what any researcher-to-be would do: I Googled a broad term related to my topic, just to see what came up. It is the Internet equivalent of cautiously dipping a toe in a swimming pool, testing the water while remaining uncommitted to entering.
I typed in “Old school whitewater kayaking,” which generally refers to the years when kayaks were still long and pointy, and I clicked on the first hit – some footage from the late 1980s of kayakers on the Ottawa River. I had expected to see standard river-running, but instead I quickly noticed that the paddlers were intentionally letting themselves be “surfed,” or held in the same spot relative to the shoreline, by the rapid’s big white piles of foam – indicative not of traditional river-running but of river play. Spins, surfing backwards, and a paddle twirl confirmed that these kayakers were in fact engaging in “playboating,” what would come to be called freestyle kayaking.
I was also familiar with another aspect of the footage. The rapid, I quickly realized, was one of the same stretches of the Ottawa River that I had frequented the past summer – a playboating-friendly section known as McCoy’s. Despite paddling to a soundtrack from a different era, the kayakers in this video were playing in the exact same spots in which I myself had learned the basics of freestyle kayaking not long ago. I sat, intrigued, and watched the whole video through.
I compared with this video a mental image of my own footage from the previous summer and pictured myself surfing in those same holes. The boat I had paddled, a freestyle kayak fairly typical of modern boat design called the Jackson All Star, is barely over half the length of the boats in this video, I realized. Its volume is also proportioned completely differently than that of the long, sleek boats typical of the old school era. Perhaps the only notable similarity in design was the kayaks’ material, plastic. I was impressed by how dramatically kayak design had changed in the scant 25 years since the filming of this video.
I dug up some more old kayaking footage online and found that the other main component of freestyle kayaking during this time was a move called the ender, in which the kayaker plugs the front, or bow, of their kayak underwater using a ‘hole,’ after which the buoyancy of the kayak bounces the boat and the paddler up into the air. Along with surfing and a move called the ‘squirt,’ in which the kayaker brings the bow up unto the air instead of the stern, this was pretty much the extent of playboating at the time. I had known that the old school playboating during this era was very basic compared to the tricks performed today, but once again I was struck by how much play in kayaks had changed over only a few decades. It doesn’t take someone even remotely familiar with freestyle kayaking to understand, simply through looks, how drastic the difference is between freestyle kayaking’s beginning stages and its current representation, both in terms of the moves and the kayak design.
I began to realize that there must have been an incredible transformation in the way this sport was practiced to account for such a dramatic change over such a relatively short existence. My immediate question was, “What happened?” I wanted to know how this remarkable evolution had occurred and what it had looked like. My search for an answer to these questions came to be the driving force behind my investigation and subsequent interpretation of freestyle kayak evolution.
It wasn’t long in my search before two fundamental truths about the nature of this evolution became apparent. One was that no single innovation is responsible for the majority of the progression that freestyle kayaking has achieved. There have been plenty of critical junctures in freestyle’s evolution since the first paddlers played in whitewater – junctures resulting from innovations with lasting, transformative impacts on the sport. It is in fact the abundance of these separate watershed moments, however, that makes the path of freestyle’s evolution a complex journey of ever-improving technique and equipment as opposed to a story dominated by a single major metamorphosis, or even a couple of major metamorphoses.
This makes identifying and understanding the extensive series of individual innovations in freestyle’s history essential to understanding how freestyle evolved. It necessitates focusing on the chronology, the interconnectedness, and the legacies of these innovations. So while I offer my own conclusions on which trends in freestyle’s history have been most impactful and even conclude by generalizing about the main driving forces of progression, it would be an overstatement to mistakenly attribute the whole of freestyle’s progression to these few key elements of the evolution.
The other concept that became apparent almost immediately in my initial research was that the story of the evolution of freestyle tricks could not be told without that of the evolution of the freestyle kayak. These two stories, I found, have been intertwined incredibly closely throughout every twist and turn of the evolution. This is understandably so considering the important role played by the design of a kayak in determining what can actually be performed in the kayak. That particular idea is one to which all freestyle kayakers who have experienced a variety of boat designs learn to understand but one which those unfamiliar with freestyle kayaking may have a hard time appreciating. Yet understanding how two components of one sport – kayak tricks and boat design – have combined together to drive progression illuminates many aspects of the nature of freestyle evolution. Accordingly, it seems necessary to place any conclusions resulting from an exploration of these themes within the framework of how freestyle evolved, the explanation of which requires a detailed look at freestyle’s history.
Interestingly, I could never draw a conclusion as to whether advances in boat design consistently preceded the creation of new tricks or vice versa. It makes logical sense that kayakers pushed the limits of what could be done in their kayaks and responded to this progression by altering boat design to better suit their advances in play. In many instances in freestyle’s evolution, this seems to be the case. Yet innovative professional kayaker Steve Fisher, who is responsible for creating a number of today’s most popular wave tricks over a decade ago, proves this is not always the case. He credits paddling the most advanced boat on the market with new technology as what led him to his immensely influential innovations. (In his case it was the prior invention of the “planing hull” that allowed for his tricks to be possible in a kayak.)[1] Clay Wright’s invention of the loop – an ender-turned-front flip – is another particularly interesting example of the complexity of this idea. After he envisioned the loop while playing with toy kayaks and learned to perform it himself, trends in boat design brought about new characteristics in the era’s emerging kayaks that were unfavorable to performing his maneuver.[2] In a twist of fate, the loop would later become one of the most influential kayak tricks of all time and currently continues to heavily influence boat design. It is clear that while innovations in boat design are not consistently the result of previous progression in kayak maneuvers, the reverse is also not always the case. What emerges, then, when trying to make a broad statement about the nature of all trick inventions is not unlike the classic ‘chicken or the egg?’ dilemma. Major innovations in freestyle, then, must be examined on a case-by-case basis if one is to reconcile the influence of paddler innovation with the influence of boat design innovation. This does not mean larger connections cannot be drawn – it says quite the opposite, actually – but simply that universal statements concerning this idea are difficult to support. Once again, in this respect kayak evolution is seen as being best explored through a detailed history.
The answer behind the question of why freestyle evolved as did – not how it evolved or what that evolution looked like but why it progressed so quickly and dramatically – proved to be equally elusive. It wasn’t until I was well into my research that I finally understood the driving forces behind the multi-decade journey I was studying. These influences, such as competition, for example, would prove to be ingrained thoroughly enough in the story of freestyle evolution that a full understanding of the evolution itself was necessary, I decided, if I was to draw any conclusions about freestyle kayaking from these influences – reason yet again to explore the evolution itself at every twist and turn of its progression. While important to understanding the nature of evolution, the why question about freestyle’s progress would have no basis through which to be explored if not examined in the context of freestyle kayaking’s intriguing history.
Why study the evolution of freestyle kayaking in the first place? As says the common justification for having history requirements in school, there’s no better way to understand the present than through the context of the past. In kayaking terms, we see this evident in the relationship between modern freestyle and its old school roots, which, while not commonly the focus of attention in the world of whitewater paddling, is a close and significant relationship indeed. This is illustrated, for example, through the fact that the majority of the whitewater kayak industry’s top playboat designers are seasoned kayakers with a solid foundation of experience in old school kayaking and a deep understanding of freestyle’s past. It is evident that there is value in knowledge of freestyle history when involving oneself with even the most modern aspects of freestyle.
As I shifted my focus early on from simply learning to creating a thesis and informing others – both freestyle kayakers and non-kayakers – I attempted to hone in on what matters most about freestyle kayaking’s evolution. I knew I wanted to provide through my thesis’s supporting evidence what will give a reader the best foundation for further discovery in the realm of freestyle kayaking, whether that be learning about other aspects of the sport, being able to appreciate and understand what one sees when viewing current freestyle, or even increasing one’s skill set as a kayaker. I certainly do not attempt to instruct, nor am I interested in simply providing a survey of freestyle kayaking history without driving towards deeper conclusions. My paper’s objective is offering what the past can teach in order to provide a more holistic understanding of freestyle kayaking, which in turn could benefit anyone interested in freestyle, kayaker or not, in a variety of ways.
The question mentioned previously of why freestyle kayaking has evolved – of what influences drove the progression – has the potential to reveal great insight into the significance of the evolution. In regard to my objective with this thesis paper, however, answering it better serves as a way to conclude and continue beyond the lessons of freestyle’s history than as means of achieving the greatest understanding of the evolution itself. Accordingly, my angle of attack with the compilation of my research has been to answer my first simple question of “What happened?” I return to the curiosity that arose when comparing old footage to modern playboating and attempt to explain what is responsible for the vast discrepancy in methods of play and boat design that exists between the two. The evolution that connects them, I found, is a fascinating story.
I open my argument and subsequent historical exploration on the premise that such drastic evolution resulted from two main phenomena. One is continuous innovation in boat design that has been achieved most consistently through a gradual shortening of kayak length and a constant change in the shape and volume distribution of the kayaks. The second is an expansion of the axes – the planes of motion (or “dimensions” as some in playboating’s past would term them) – on which freestyle is performed. These are major themes present throughout freestyle history, concepts that show up enough in the course of the evolution to play a strong – and I would argue the strongest – role in guiding it. They by no means represent every mark of progress in freestyle kayaking’s history and have their limitations. A laundry list of innovations, however, would do us no good in truly grasping the thematic and developmental nature of freestyle evolution; it is this nature that, in the form of a thesis, my research attempts to reveal.
NOTES
Just as it is necessary to understand traffic patterns before learning to drive a car, one must understand the basic workings of whitewater before beginning to understand kayak freestyle. The premise of playboating throughout all of its existence has been to utilize abnormalities in a flowing current instead of avoiding or passing through them, which is generally the goal when simply trying to get from the top of a rapid to the bottom. This point A to point B approach to whitewater is the hallmark of traditional river-running. This approach also applies to the popular whitewater discipline called ‘creeking’ or ‘creekboating’ (in which paddlers run steep rivers, often including waterfalls) and applies especially to racing, in which, even if gates are present, the objective is to move downriver as efficiently as possible.
The two types of abnormalities that are most commonly used in river play are standing waves and what are called hydraulics or ‘holes.’ Surfing on standing waves can easily be likened to surfing ocean waves, with the main difference being only that on a river the paddler stays in the same spot relative to the shoreline, as does the wave. Gravity simply keeps the kayaker lower on the face of the wave, unless the kayak presents enough surface area to the oncoming water for the current to pull the kayak up and over the wave.
A kayaker surfing a hole, on the other hand, utilizes water recirculating back upstream – a common occurrence in whitewater – to his or her advantage. Holes are created when water flowing over an underwater drop continues downwards along with the riverbed. As a result, water nearer to the surface moves to fill the open area where the current would have flowed had there not been a drop. Another very common abnormality in current is the ‘eddy line,’ the line at which a river’s moving current meets up against a pool of stagnant water at the river’s edge called an eddy. This feature is most commonly used for the ‘squirt’ maneuver and for a more specialized form of playboating called squirtboating.
As mentioned before, the dedicated river-runner will not seek out such abnormalities as large waves or holes unless it poses a strategic advantage. Holes in particular can be dangerous as a result of their potential to be retentive. The freestyle kayaker, however, intentionally seeks out these abnormalities – choosing ones that are safe enough to enter and that possess particular characteristics that best suit their style of play. These abnormalities become “river features,” as opposed to obstacles. Just as an alpinist may seek out a steeper, more difficult route up a mountain while an easier path exists, playboaters can create their own challenge out of whatever whitewater provides.
A few notes about terminology: True to widely-accepted usage, I often use the term ‘playboating’ interchangeably with the term ‘freestyle kayaking’ to describe a kayaking with the intent of play. (Likewise, a ‘playboat’ is a ‘freestyle kayak’.) Some believe that ‘freestyle’ denotes only modern play, while others view the label as applying specifically to modern competitive play. Others still use it to specify that play is stationary (with the paddler continuously maintaining a surf of a river feature), as opposed to the more descriptive term ‘down-river freestyle.’ Kayak manufacturers in particular may designate a ‘playboat’ as any kayak – including river-running–play hybrids – that is designed for play, while the term ‘freestyle kayak’ is specific to boats designed only for play. The multitude of varying opinions in regard to the relationship of these terms was part of the reason why I chose the simplest commonly accepted definition. Further confusion is added to the mix with the label of ‘rodeo,’ but that term, due to the rather specific timeframe of its popular usage, specifies old-school competitive playboating up until the early 2000s, when it became replaced by ‘freestyle.’ I use ‘playboat’ to describe any kayak, whether of the ‘rodeo’ or so called ‘freestyle’ era, which is designed for play. Finally, the use of the word ‘boat’ to describe a whitewater kayak – a common usage amongst kayakers dating back to the 1970s – simply means what it sounds like.
Other forms of play that I intentionally avoid discussing in my writing are also worth mentioning here. For the duration of my project I have wanted to explore only standard stationary play of the variety that is popular in competition today, as trying to branch off into down-river freestyle and squirtboating, I felt, would distract me from my focus on telling the story of the modern freestyle kayak. (Neither down-river freestyle nor squirtboating relies on such kayaks.) I soon learned, though, that the development of both subcategories of river play were crucial to the earlier stages of what is now freestyle. River play started off including many tricks that were essentially down-river freestyle tricks (meaning that maintaining a surf in a stationary feature was not required), and squirtboating paved the way for much of the more traditional playboating that I was interested in. As a result, I focus on these forms of play when necessary but do not attempt to include their whole stories in my exploration of freestyle.
Finally, freestyle kayaking walks a fine line between ‘sport’ and ‘form of recreation,’ and I have made my best attempt to use whatever term is most fitting depending on the timeframe and circumstance. Such a distinction can be very telling about trends in playboating as a whole. Difficulty arises, though, because individual definitions of what constitutes a sport vary widely and often overlap with views on what defines recreation. With general playboating, I set a low bar for acceptance as a ‘sport’ as many kayakers today do, often referring to it as such when what is being practiced resembles techniques used in the competition of the appropriate time period.
THE BEGINNINGS OF PLAY
The story of any type of kayak begins, of course, with the primitive boats of ancient peoples. It was not until thousands of years later, however, that kayaking became embraced as a form of recreation and our story of freestyle kayaking truly begins to pick up. Documented use of kayaks for enjoyment, not solely for transportation, does not appear until the early 1900s.[3] Running rapids had also been a part of kayaking for much of the kayak’s history, but it represented another major step towards the beginnings of river play when whitewater became sought after for fun, as opposed to begrudged.
Competition in whitewater first emerged in 1940 with a race held in Maine and sponsored by the Appalachian Mountain Club.[4] Even at this time, though, kayaking in whitewater for enjoyment represented a wild fringe of outdoor recreation. When fiberglass began to replace wood as the material of choice for whitewater boats in the 1950s, kayaking down rapids was opened to more than just a select few “lunatics.”[5] Even still, those who chose a kayak to tackle whitewater – and especially those who soon went on to pioneer playboating – remained squarely outside the domain of mainstream paddle-sports.
It was with the pioneering river-running style of American whitewater enthusiast Walt Blackader that the first direct origins of freestyle were finally represented. While some kayakers may very well have spun a paddle around while floating down a rapid in years prior, Blackader was the first person to seriously focus on developing methods of play in whitewater, which he did starting in 1968 on rivers of the American West. His technique, which mainly involved intentionally passing over waves sideways or backwards, was considered extreme, especially when performed in large rapids with sizable features as he often did. As a small community began to form around Blackader and his early river play, fiberglass kayaks specialized to the demands of this style of paddling emerged out of garages and back yards. The first half of the 1970s saw paddlers hand rolling and continuing to run rapids backwards or sideways, all considered techniques outside of regular whitewater kayaking.[6]
AN EARLY REVOLUTION: PLASTIC TAKES THE RIVERS
Freestyle kayaking was still in its infancy when it experienced arguably the most transformative innovation of its existence. In 1973, the plastic molding company Hollowform produced the first whitewater kayak made completely out of plastic, beginning a trend that forever changed the face of all whitewater kayaking.[7] It would come to represent in the eyes of many the greatest single advancement in the whole of the paddling industry, let alone in freestyle.[8]
From a designer’s perspective, the benefits of the new plastic boats being produced were obvious. Even the first plastics to be introduced constituted a great leap in durability over fiberglass or other composite designs, in which layers of easily pliable fabric are shaped into a mold and made brittle and glossy through the application of resins. ‘Glass’ boats, as they were often called, could not withstand hard encounters with rocks – a near-inevitable occurrence in most whitewater paddling – making constant repair necessary. In comparison, the new plastic boats were bombproof, capable of absorbing hit after hit with no more than a scratch or dent at worst. While dangerously hard blows to a craft or pinning (getting stuck between a solid object in the river and the force of the water behind) and subsequent warping of the boat remained hazardous, the choice for many experienced whitewater enthusiasts was clear. However, the member of the whitewater community most affected by this innovation was the novice kayaker. Plastic’s durability on and off the river resulted in kayaks that were more easily put to use and maintained by the kayak instruction market, the rental fleet market, and even the average whitewater kayaker.
Plastic kayaks also appealed to a diversity of groups within the paddle-sport community as a result of their economic advantages. The cost of constant repair – previously an accepted fixture in whitewater kayaking – was easily negated, but more importantly, this new breed of kayak of was considerably easier for companies to manufacture and transport, in turn making them cheaper to purchase. An “affordability barrier” that had previously existed with fiberglass designs was broken; whitewater kayaks were soon carried in sporting goods stores and easily rented, making them accessible to average families. This economic factor was furthered by the longevity of the plastic designs over their composite forefathers, which resulted in the emergence of a substantial market for secondhand kayaks sold at an even lower price.[9]
The effects of the ensuing transition to plastic boats were sweeping. The image of general whitewater kayaking changed from one of a niche activity for adrenaline junkies to a more normal recreational experience, and the number of paddlers interested in whitewater grew. Yet the swelling ranks of whitewater kayakers in conjunction with the emergence of heartier kayaks meant too that increased attention was specifically paid to playboating. Plastic boats could better withstand the rigors of play, in which the risk of contact with rocks could be especially high.
A hike in the whitewater kayaking population also meant that innovation in boat design would be more greatly rewarded. While some understandably resented the emergence of industry in the whitewater scene, the larger kayak producers that would be introduced through the advent of the plastic boat would come to be the major source of progression in boat design. These companies and their designers proved instrumental in freestyle’s progression.
Still, composite boat construction did not disappear, and not just through the efforts of glass boat devotees. Plastic would never replace the demand for composites with the customized ‘squirt boats’ that would soon develop, while the slalom market would grow to become a significant user of glass construction. In a twist of fate, composite construction (this time using carbon fiber) would even come to make a return to the elite freestyle scene starting in the later 2000s, once a few of its characteristics became recognized as preferable when the danger of contact with rocks in particular play situations was eliminated. In freestyle kayaking’s most recent years, ‘carbon’ boats have even been made commercially available in stock models, intended for expert users. The switch to plastic, however, was a permanent one for the mainstream playboat market.
Despite its immense impact on freestyle kayaking’s future, the advent of the plastic whitewater kayaks was only the first of many innovations to come in the following decades that would alter the course of playboating. It would not be an unreasonable stretch to call it the most influential innovation of freestyle’s evolution, but it is certainly not the only defining moment in that evolution. Without it, early play may never have progressed to the freestyle kayaking that exists today, but the same can be said of other key moments of freestyle progression. Additionally, unlike a visionary innovation in playboating or boat design, the switch to plastic could also be considered inevitable. Accordingly, this materials innovation is best seen as a powerful platform for the progression in design features and tricks that would soon come in kayak design.
OLD-SCHOOL PLAY
The next advancement in the course of freestyle’s early development was the growth of stationary play, a major milestone that, unlike the introduction of plastic kayaks, passed somewhat quietly. During the mid 1970s, kayakers began to explore purposefully entering holes as a means of creating added challenge. While in its early stages this meant punching through holes, it was not long before paddlers who were tired of simply paddling through familiar rapids were intentionally letting themselves be surfed by river features – the major principle of freestyle even in its most current representation today. Kayakers further experimented by increasing the amount of control they had of their surf and were soon moving from side to side in holes.[10]
The second half of the 1970s included a number of exceptionally notable advances in the evolution of freestyle. The first was the advent of the backsurf. The length of kayaks at the time made the boats naturally surf holes sideways; surfing forwards, or upriver, was the obvious instinct on waves. Simply surfing one of these features backwards marked the true expansion into the horizontal axis (or horizontal plane) of movement in stationary play.
Freestyle kayaking also saw its first formal competition in 1976 on the Salmon River of Idaho, followed by the ‘Stanley Rodeo’ in Stanley, Idaho in 1977.[11] Calling it a ‘rodeo’ made sense, as paddlers dropped into holes to prove they could withstand the ride – interestingly intended mainly as a representation of their river-running skills – while also attempting to show off any creativity they could muster. The first rodeos caught on and other similar competitions began to pop up around the American West, drawing paddlers from as far as the East Coast. At the 1979 Stanley Rodeo, the first cash prizes ever awarded for a playboating competition were introduced. (Within five years, cash prizes at rodeos had reached four-figure sums).[12] While a rodeo would come to be defined simply as a playboating competition, at this time a rodeo often included racing and squirtboat competition in addition to competitive hole-riding, or “hot-dogging.”[13]
The late 1970s brought a final major innovation to freestyle by adding to river play’s limited trick repertoire. The expansion into the vertical realm of play was made simultaneously with the leap into aerial playboating through the advent of what would become freestyle’s most classic trick: the ender. The ender was initiated by plugging the bow of the kayak into moving water, usually utilizing a hole or the trough of a wave to do so. The buoyancy of the submerged bow would then cause the entire boat to be thrust back up into the air, sometimes rejecting the kayak powerfully enough to make the entire boat clear the water,[14] which was an especially impressive feat considering that most boats at this time were still over 13 feet long.[15] In respect to the principle on which it worked and its potential to get an entire kayak airborne, the ender also served as an ancestor to the loop, which involves turning the same type of pop produced by an ender into a front flip.
The ender would eventually become eclipsed by the cartwheel and fall out of fashion, but few other moves are looked back upon with the same fondness. Paddlers described the move as producing a remarkable sensation when performed with the high-volume boats of the time – something that disappeared with the reduction in boat volume, which would come with the increased popularity of the cartwheel. In its heyday, the trick was viewed as the ‘holy grail’ of river play.[16] “Enders give you a chance to lose all your inhibitions and behave like a foolish kid,” writes the author of one instructional manual.[17] Professional kayaker Eric Jackson, who would go on to become a freestyle champion and industry-leading boat designer, was a self-professed “ender freak” who couldn’t get enough of the move during his early years. Known as the “Ender King” at the time, he was largely responsible for popularizing the move in New England.[18]
The early 1980s were marked by a continuation of the ender’s rise in popularity. With the trick’s spectacle and expansion of the axes on which play could be performed, it was clear by the 1980s that the craze for getting vertical had taken hold of river play. The ender was soon expanded upon with the invention of the pirouette, a 360-degree spin – rotating around the bow like a corkscrew – during an ender. “Enders were freestyle,” according to freestyle champion Clay Wright, until the invention of the pirouette – so paddlers took to the pirouette just as eagerly as they had to the ender. 720-degree and even 1080-degree pirouettes came next,[19] followed by the ‘polish ender,’ a variation in which the paddler remained surfing the feature following the completion of an ender[20] – the first example of such a dynamic trick performed as stationary play. With the entrance into the vertical realm of kayaking behind them, paddlers were ready for kayak design to step up and cater to the new style of play.
DOMINANCE OF THE DANCER
Boat design in the 1980s would represent a few important mixed with years of , with the greatest innovations occurring towards the beginning and the very end of the decade. The 1980 release of a kayak model called Topolino by the British company Eskimo Kayaks helped pioneer perhaps the most consistent and dramatic trend throughout the evolution of freestyle kayaks: the shortening of boat length. The ‘Topo,’ as it was often called, was revolutionary not only because of its profoundly blunt, rounded features that set it apart from other boats of the time but also because it was designed with a length of 2.2 meters, an dramatic departure from the time period’s 4-meter standard.[21] Designed as a creekboat, the Topo was the first example of what would be called the “spud boat” design (due to its distant resemblance to a potato), yet it still could surf waves and holes.
The American boat company Perception also made a fairly dramatic shortening in length with its release of the Eclipse, a model which, although a dud of a design, also broke below the 4-meter mark, although less dramatically so than the Topo had done. Under the direction of designers Bill Masters and Allan Stancil, the Eclipse represented over a foot in length reduction from the kayaks already in Perception’s whitewater line-up, the Quest and the Mirage. Its focus on pure river-running as opposed to the traditional influences of slalom racing represented a larger change in Perception’s design strategy[22] that would soon help the company become a pioneer in playboating.
With the Quest and Mirage already established as popular boats, Perception Kayaks was poised to be a strong player in the whitewater kayak sales market during the 1980s. Few predicted, however, the impact that a single boat design would have not only on Perception but also on the kayak market as a whole. 1983 brought the release of the Perception Dancer, widely considered ‘the boat that changed it all.’
Aesthetically, the Dancer is to whitewater kayaking what the famous Spitfire is to fighter aviation. Its lines are sleek and smooth, its profile representative of all the classic design traits of its era; to this day it remains one of the most beautiful models ever produced. The Dancer is worthy of its fame and reverence, though, mostly as a result of its innovative design characteristics.
While still designed primarily as a river-runner, as all boats of the time were, the Dancer has often been viewed as the first playboat.[23] As the shortest of the four models that the Masters-Stancil design team had created for Perception, the Dancer was 11 and a half feet long[24] – a length that, while literally twice as long as leading playboats would be three decades later,[25] still represented gutsy progression at the time. The model, however, was not only innovative because of its length. Its design also incorporated a progressive amount of rocker – the degree of upward curvature in the hull of a boat[26] – more towards the middle of the boat and towards the very ends in comparison with Perception’s previous designs.[27] Additionally, it was relatively low in volume. Yet its length was still the feature that most notably set it apart from previous boats.[28]
Other paddlers had laughed at the short length of this river-runner when the first prototypes were released in fiberglass. The first time it was paddled, Stancil found it carved into eddies so effortlessly that even he believed there had been some mistake in the design. Reason for doubt was not unreasonable in light of Perception’s previous efforts with short-boat innovation, as the Eclipse had not proved anything about the long-term viability of a trend in shortening kayak length. The Dancer’s long success, however, strongly secured the shortening of whitewater boats as a lasting progression in playboat evolution and not a fluke of attempted innovation as some onlookers had believed to be the case. The Dancer became, in the words of one writer, “the future of the sport.”[29]
Once the Dancer caught on, there were no boats that competed on equal footing, and the design continued to dominate within the whitewater kayak industry for almost a decade. No other whitewater kayak before or since has been so successful for so long. Hydra produced the P-51 Mustang just a few months after the Dancer’s first release, and while its design allowed it to at least compete with the Dancer, both the company Hydra and the Mustang model never found the same success as did Perception and the Dancer.
Perception followed the Dancer with the 1984 release of a design called the Sabre, a radical, hard-edged playboat that was reminiscent of the era’s long squirt-boat designs. While not recognized as such at the time, the Sabre was in many respects an early squirtboat.[30] This represented a significant departure from the Dancer, and although the Dancer remained more popular, the sharper edges and squirtboat-reminiscent features of the Sabre would prove to be a leader in trends for playboat design of the future.
1984 also saw the release of the Jeti, a 9’10” spud boat designed by the small kayak company Noah.[31] Like the Topo, the Jeti helped pave the way for shorter boats despite being primarily a creeker and not the typical river-runner design of the era. After observing the design, Slim Ray, an author and contributor to Canoe Magazine, wrote that, “Short boats, of which the Jeti is currently the ultimate example, are here to stay.”[32] The Jeti managed to find a regional following in the area of its production, but Noah eventually went out of business due to other circumstances and the boat never found great success. It was also at this time that Prijon, a European company well known for its composite slalom kayaks, entered the American plastic kayak industry with the production of the T-Slalom. At 12’1” the T-Slalom achieved popularity among small regional pockets of the U.S. not unlike the Jeti.[33] Such designs did not capitalize on any radical innovation, though, and with Perception’s success in promoting its designs, the Dancer still managed to consistently outsell any would-be competitor.
THE ‘80s
Vertical play was further expanded in the early 1980s with the stern squirt, a move which involved the kayaker sinking the back of their boat underwater using the current at an eddy line and performing a momentary ‘stern stall,’ balancing vertically on the boat’s stern. The stern squirt joined the ender as a popular and soon-to-be classic playboating staple. As the name suggests, the move was pioneered not by kayakers paddling traditional river-running designs but by squirtboaters.
Squirtboats are radically different from any other type of kayak. Custom made out of fiberglass for the individual paddler, the boats have to maintain a buoyancy of 51% with the paddler inside, meaning that both boat and kayaker barely floated on the surface. This is accomplished by giving the kayaks incredibly low volume. The boats generally take on a somewhat normal width but have a flat deck both in front of and behind the cockpit. What this unique design allows for is an ease of movement unparalleled with any other type of boat, in which simply by leaning backwards the squirtboater can sink the whole stern of their kayak and raise the bow into the air, for example. Squirtboating has never reached nearly the same level of popularity as regular freestyle kayaking and to this day it retains only a small, nearly cult-like following. Yet as a result of this greater ease of movement, innovation in squirtboating would prove to often be a step ahead of regular playboaters in pioneering innovative maneuvers. As “the catalyst of freestyle,” according to Wright (the 2013 Mens World Squirt Champion), squirtboating helped spawn multiple characteristics of freestyle that went on to become major elements of the sport.[34]
By 1985, nearly a dozen rodeos had been established in the American West while a few had already sprung up on the East Coast as well. It was already evident even at this stage in the evolution of the rodeo that the rodeo’s popularity was increasing directly alongside the level of playboating that leading kayakers were performing. Continued progression, however, proved to move at a slower pace during the second half of the 1980s than it had in the first. Although boat length continued to drop, no new designs made anywhere near as large a splash in the rodeo scene as the Dancer had done.
The nine-foot, six-inch British-designed Rotobat of Pyranha Canoes was released in 1986; originally intended for kayak polo in pools, it found acceptance as a whitewater boat yet remained unremarkable aside from its short length. Still selling largely to a European river-running market, Prijon followed in 1987 with the introduction of its T-Canyon model (10’8”) into the United States, where it was met with slow sales. 1989’s Prijon Invader proved more successful than the T-Canyon but, like the boats before it, contributed very minimally to progression. During the same year, Wave Sport entered the scene as a very small, Colorado-based kayak company and imported an unremarkable design from Britain that developed only a niche market in its region.[35]
Perception’s previous dominance in the whitewater market had in part been responsible for the relative slowing of progression seen during the second half of the 1980s, as the company’s near-monopoly on boat sales hindered competition. The period, however, had seen no new radical designs from Hydra or Prijon, either. The boats of the period simply represented varied approaches to the same themes in design. Despite all the play being performed in them, the kayaks remained river-running designs at heart with very mild influences coming from squirtboating.[36]
Two notable designs, however, were in fact released just before the start of the ‘90s. While the Dancer still remained popular, Perception introduced the Corsica, a design pioneered by a young South African paddler named Corran Addison. The design had its roots in a prototype that Addison had personally introduced to Masters of Perception Kayaks at age 17, a design which Addison believed could improve on the Dancer. Masters, impressed, had hired Addison as part of the Perception team.[37] While not a game changer, the Corsica’s design was successful and established Addison as an upcoming designer in the whitewater industry, specifically in regards to rodeo.
The second design was the aptly named Response, introduced by a new company called Dagger Kayaks. Immediately upon its entry into the whitewater market, Dagger was able to compete with Perception better than any other company since Perception’s rise to industry dominance, having produced the first design to truly threaten the now-six-year-old Dancer. Dagger churned out Responses. The boat was popular due to its ease of handling, in part a result of more rounded edges. It also was distinct in that it featured a flat back deck. The introduction of this boat foreshadowed a heightening competition within the industry that would soon establish itself in the coming decade.
RODEO REVAMPED: THE EARLY ‘90s
While the coming decade proved fruitful in producing innovation, the 1990s would also mark a major transition in freestyle kayaking as a sport and an industry. As playboating began to pass from the Baby Boomers to Generation X – and later to Generation Y by the end of the decade – rodeo as it had existed in the 1980s was replaced by “new concepts” and “new attitudes.”[38] The industry matured in terms of growth in popularity and industry but grew younger in terms of its image, preferences, and emerging support base. Its appeal came to parallel that of skateboarding, snowboarding, and BMX, which were also growing at the time, and the tricks would take on a more acrobatic nature that better suited younger bodies and tastes. Additionally, rodeo soon became much more of a sport than in the past with the growth of a professional competition circuit and increasing regulation.
Another major difference brought about by this transformation was that rodeo would no longer be considered a less significant sub-sport of whitewater kayaking during the ‘90s as it had been during the ‘70s and ‘80s. It became a major component of whitewater kayaking and even the central focus of whitewater paddle-sports as a whole. This growth led to an increasing gap between freestyle and river-running. Even though playboats remained river-runners for some time, the growth of “park-and-play” (remaining at one feature for a whole paddling session instead of paddling to them as part of a run) decreased the popularity of river-running in comparison to rodeo.[39] This trend, while discouraging to some, would eventually lead to the playboat specialization necessary for continued freestyle evolution.
Most relevant to the physical evolution of the sport was the ‘90’s new breed of kayaks, one in which boat design was more “sensitive to profile and volume distribution.”[40] It was during this period that designers discovered how best to balance reasonable buoyancy with the ‘slicey’ properties of the squirt boat in accordance with the time period’s popular moves – achieved by increasing volume around the cockpit while significantly tapering it at the ends.
The year 1991 was a major one for innovation in design and growth of the rodeo scene. Dagger released a second boat that could compete with the Dancer, the Crossfire, which sported an increase in bow rocker, further length reduction, and sharper, more aggressive stern edges.[41] Both the Crossfire and 1989’s Dagger Response proved successful in competition. One such competition, the 1991 Ocoee Rodeo, held on Tennessee’s Ocoee River, set the record at the time for the largest rodeo ever held with over 100 competitors (including those from squirtboat and single canoe classes). Another 1991 rodeo, this one held in Wales[42] and called the “1991 World Stunt Boat Championships,” marked the world’s first international playboating competition featuring competitors from more than one country. Both events helped contribute to the emergence of a growing rodeo circuit.[43]
If 1991 had marked a big year for innovation, 1993 eclipsed it completely. The year marked the beginning of what Jackson sees as “the biggest years of [freestyle] evolution,” which he believes continued on until 2009.[44] Most notably, 1993 was the year in which the cartwheel, without a doubt the most-performed freestyle trick of all time, made its debut both in standard playboating and the competitive world stage. Like the squirt, the cartwheel had been developed prior to its emergence in regular freestyle by squirtboaters,[45] in particular by legendary squirtboater Jim Snyder.[46] Once brought to the regular rodeo scene in 1993, the move exploded in popularity, taking the ender’s place as the most popular move.
Like the ender, pirouette, and stern squirt, the cartwheel engaged the kayaker in the vertical axis of play. To visualize it, imagine a kayaker flat-spinning, which is done in the same manner as a ceiling fan – on a horizontal plane. Then rotate it sideways by 90 degrees so the plane on which the kayaker is spinning resembles that of the arms of a windmill. The ends of the kayak rotate around the kayaker’s ever-turning body. One 360 rotation, or “throwing” two “ends,” constitutes a single cartwheel. This maneuver would go on to quite literally define the most progressive stationary play of the time until the loop and the blunt could wrest the undivided attention of the whole of freestyle out of its grip. Kayakers would soon be attempting to link together as many cartwheels as possible without stopping. It wasn’t long before Jackson built on the cartwheel concept and invented the split wheel, a more technical maneuver also still very relevant in modern hole boating involving a change in the direction of a cartwheel mid-way through completion.[47]
1993 saw not only the introduction of the cartwheel to rodeo but also one of the greatest showdowns in the history of freestyle boat design, which pitted three industry heavyweights against each other. The arena was the 1993 World Whitewater Rodeo Championships, held on the legendary Ocoee River, and the spectators were over 100 other competitors representing 11 countries, all with an eye out for the hottest new boat designs.[48] The newly adopted cartwheels were the most valuable chips to be played.
Perception, Prijon, and Dagger were the competitors. Perception entered with the Pirouette Super Sport, designed with this particular competition in mind,[49] a boat with improved rodeo capabilities over previous models of Perception’s modestly successful Pirouette line and a particularly low volume stern.[50]
Based on the dominance of Dagger and Perception designs in the recent past, one might have expected Prijon to enter the competition with the least competitive technology. This, however, was not the case. The Prijon Hurricane, just released for the 1993 season, had already showed it could outperform previous boats[51] with a number of progressive design features and would be paddled in the competition by Addison, who had since left Perception. Most notably, the Hurricane featured an unusually flat hull, particularly in the rear half of the boat. While not yet fully incorporating the flat-hulled design that would soon characterize all playboats, the Hurricane’s high performance foreshadowed the true ‘planing hull’ breakthrough that would occur only a few years later.
Like the Pirouette Super Sport, the Hurricane had a low-volume stern, but it differentiated itself with a noticeably asymmetric profile; its widest point was not at the center of the boat but behind it. The kayak’s stern, while thin deck to hull, was quite wide. These characteristics would be embraced by a growing number of boat designs later in the decade. In the words of Spelius of Dagger, the kayak represented a “new operating system” in boat design.[52]
When Spelius recognized the superiority of Prijon’s Hurricane over Dagger’s 1991 Crossfire, he and the Dagger team produced the Transition, a last-minute creation before Worlds. More nimble than its Dagger forbearers, the Transition incorporated some features of the old Crossfire but more closely followed the lead of the Hurricane’s advances. It, too, had a flat stern deck and an asymmetric profile.[53]
After fierce competition, the results were tallied, and it was revealed that the top two finishers were Jackson and Spelius, both paddling the Transition.[54] The Super Sport and Hurricane missed out on the podium entirely. However, despite all three boats representing the best efforts of the leading designers of the era’s top companies, less evolution in design was represented in the kayaks than might be assumed. Similarly, while the Hurricane clearly represented some progression, nobody quite grasped the significance of the Hurricane’s hull design.
While obviously designed with play in mind, the three boats were still river-runners in comparison to future standards, with no drastic differences to mark them as playboats. All were in the 10-foot range, no different from the more dedicated river-runners of the time.[55] The 1994 release of a slightly modified Transition, which brought the Transition model to the regular market for the first time, saw the boat classified as an all-rounder, even though it had been designed with some of the most progressive rodeo-inspired characteristics of the time.[56] An innovative concept would soon be introduced, however, that would leave a permanent mark on boat design and begin a revolution in freestyle, particularly in wave play.
DISPLACEMENT DISPLACED: THE INTRODUCTION OF THE PLANING HULL
With the mid-‘90s began another quickening of the pace of boat design evolution. A mark of this time period was the introduction of a number of new kayaks in the nine-foot range, which represented a whole foot of length reduction from the major new models at the 1993 World Championships. Similarities in stern profiles also revealed increased influence from squirt boats, an early sign that the peak of the ‘Slicey Boat Era’ was not too far away. It would be during this same decade that volume in the ends of the kayak would be further reduced by dramatic proportions so that boats could better slice into the water for cartwheels. Sweeping innovations concerning the hull, however, would come first.
In 1994 the Canadian company Necky Kayaks, which had until then been mostly involved in the ocean and tour-kayaking markets,[57] introduced to the rodeo community a new whitewater model they had been working on called the Rip. Made from fiberglass, which was still not uncommon for prototypes, this model was the first whitewater kayak to feature a planing hull.[58] In 1993 Necky had produced the Rip International, an ocean-surfing kayak that, like most surf kayaks since the 1970s, had a planing hull resembling a surfboard.[59] It was during the following year that British slalom racer and ocean kayak surfer Spike Gladwin, along with Mike Neckar, a fellow kayak surfer and the owner of Necky, first brought this concept to a river. The inspiration for this had come when Gladwin tried out the Rip International design in whitewater, finding that it performed well in rapids and also that, unsurprisingly, it was an excellent surfer. Despite this, the 1994 Rip prototype was otherwise more heavily influenced by river-running than by the objective of surfing.[60]
Up until this point, all whitewater kayaks had utilized the more traditional ‘displacement hull’ concept, which for whitewater boats in particular means a U-shaped hull. With the flat planing hull, on the other hand, a smooth surface devoid of lateral curvature covers the majority of the bottom of the kayak. Such a hull acts like a displacement hull and plows through the water when paddled normally, but when kept flat against fast-moving oncoming water, hydrodynamic lift causes the hull to skim along the water in the same way that a water ski keeps a skier on the water’s surface. The planing hull meant that a better surf could be achieved in a hole, but its real advantage was with wave play.
A displacement hull could in fact plane to an extent on waves but this was instantly broken as soon as the kayak started to turn. During a spin in a displacement-hulled boat, the shape of the hull that is being presented to oncoming water will change in relation to the current, ending whatever planing action was occurring. Additionally, a U-shaped hull turned sideways is significantly less hydrodynamic, meaning it presents a shape against which oncoming water can better push and generate drag. Without the recirculative properties of a hole keeping the boat in place, a kayaker would quickly be pushed over, or ‘flushed’ from, a wave. Contrarily, with an actively planing flat hull, the shape of the part of the hull presented to oncoming current changes much less during a spin. Furthermore, a planing hull turned sideways is in theory no less hydrodynamic than when in a front-surf, although getting the boat to plane perfectly when sideways is more technically challenging on the part of the paddler. In this way, the planing hull allows a kayaker to rotate around a central point, which is crucial for flat-spins.[61] (While a U-shaped hull’s superiority for tackling rock slides and drops makes it most commonly preferred for creeking,[62] a flat hull also poses no problems for river-running. In fact, the planing hull would eventually come to be preferred by many for river-running).
Gladwin and Neckar brought their Rip design in prototype to the 1994 Ottawa River Rodeo, where they let other kayakers try it out on a popular wave. The boat was a hit, although Necky was slow to realize the significance of this hull and capitalize upon their innovation. It was other designers, particularly Addison, who would popularize the planing hull in rodeo. “When the other designers saw that you could paddle that boxy, bizarre thing they knew they could make something much more friendly that still spun well,” says Wright of the Rip. “Corran [Addison] got his design out first and doesn't argue when credit is given to him, but it's Necky who got it all started and spread the word.”[63]
Addison, who had left Perception three years earlier to focus on slalom, had co-founded a company called Savage Designs in North Carolina not long before and, later in 1994, released the Scorpion, the first planing-hulled kayak to come out in plastic. Addison understood the significance of the planing hull in river play and the Scorpion met the new hull design with other progressive, rodeo-oriented characteristics.
1995 brought Necky’s entrance into the plastic playboat market with a modified production model of the Rip, which shortened the length of the original design from 9’2” to 8’10”. Addison, however, quickly became the focus of attention again as Savage shot back with the Fury in 1996. While a failure at Necky to fully realize the potential of the planing hull meant the company would not get the first stab at its market,[64] Addison’s reputation as a radical visionary made him the perfect designer to pick up where Necky had left off. Regarded as something of an oddball, the Fury incorporated small round divots in the hull in an attempt to further improve surfing capabilities.
In comparison to the Rip, the boat was designed with a greater focus on rodeo. The hull divot idea proved to be a dead end, but the otherwise extremely flat hull, comparatively short length of 8’6”, low volume, and aggressively sharp chines (the line at which the hull meets the boat’s sides) made the boat a key leader in playboat evolution and a model of which many other boat designers would soon emulate.[65] Addison, with his progressive image, fresh perspective, and insightful intuitions about the future of rodeo, was able to promote it well. Himself a Gen-Xer, he embodied the trends that the planing hulled-rodeo boat would soon bring to freestyle and was “not bound by aging [baby] boomer concepts and thinking.”[66] The Fury would prove to be ahead of its time but also serve as a final farewell to concepts of old.
If the Fury was the year’s most progressive boat, Dagger’s RPM (“Radical Play Machine”) was the most well liked.[67] Despite it’s name, the kayak was neither as radical nor as good at play at its designers had imagined; it was devoid of a planing hull, lacked defined chines, and, at just under 9 feet, it was not radically short. Even so, in a display of lingering conservatism in the market, the Fury was looked at by many as too strange while the tamer RPM became embraced. Dagger’s success with a model that was almost already outdated within a year of its production showed that, while the displacement hull may have been on its way out in rodeo, the planing hull had not yet been fully accepted as the hallmark progression that it was.
Shortcomings in rodeo success did not overshadow the RPM’s role as an “everyman’s boat” that still built upon the major advances in boat design before the planing hull.[68] It found its place as an excellent introductory boat that would go on to great success in river-running and remain in production for years. The RPM eventually became the best-selling whitewater kayak of all time and would be re-introduced by Dagger as a limited edition model (with slight modifications and an upgraded interior) in 2013 – a testament to its spot as one of whitewater kayaking’s most beloved boats.[69]
1997: RODEO DESIGN FINDS DIRECTION
While the planing hull continued to make its way into the rodeo scene during this era, the year 1997 marked a surge in production that would continue into the 2000s. During this year, previous schools of thought on how to advance rodeo remained well-entrenched, as for some time, the industry struggled to embrace this new technology. After all, no past knowledge existed on these hulls in their application to rodeo. It would take a series of boats that failed to progress, complimented by a number of designs that truly did lead the way, to guide the industry in the right direction. The year 1997 would serve as a bridge between the raw innovation of the mid-90s and the refined success that characterized rodeo models just before dawn of the new millennium. Designers would rely heavily on intuition and trial-and-error methods for achieving innovation, as the sport of rodeo was too much of an oddball to make serious engineering applicable; accordingly, promotion based on “mumbo-jumbo science and physics” flourished.[70]
Prijon followed the RPM with the 1997 release of the Fly, which was in many ways characteristic of Dagger’s most recent design.[71] It built on some of the successes of the older Hurricane but was shorter at 8’10”, more on par with the current standard in rodeo boat length, which most often fell between eight and a half to nine feet. The boat, which just a few years earlier would have represented incredible advancements, now represented only a partial commitment to the most current, progressive ideas. It had a semi-planing hull that, while flatter than the RPM’s, still failed to capitalize on the abilities of the fully planing models. It was also not as good at cartwheels as the rodeo market would come to demand[72] and would prove to be in the last line of kayaks not to fully embrace this ever-more-popular trick.
It was at about this time that Pyranha, realizing the promise behind the still-growing rodeo market in the United States, began importing kayaks from Britain to try and carve out a piece of the emerging scene for themselves. They started selling two designs, the Acrobat and the Stunt, each of which experimented with previously untapped hull design ideas. The Acrobat’s hull featured two concave areas, one on either side of the cockpit’s underbelly, while the Stunt’s hull was marked by multiple areas of increased convexity over the normal shape of the hull. Far from possessing planing capabilities, the designs were received for about a season but, in retrospect, proved that such experimentation in the opposite direction of the planing hull was an evolutionary dead end.[73]
Wave Sport worked hard to produce a number of designs around this time in their attempt to increase their foothold in the rodeo-oriented market. Notable was the 7’5” Stubby, which followed an unimpressive performance by the company’s 1995 model, the Frankenstein. Realizing that the Frankenstein design, intended for the performance of the more old school moves,[74] had been made irrelevant by the increased popularity of the cartwheel, the 1997 release of the Stubby was an opportunity to better embrace rodeo in its most recent representation. The Stubby, however, was strongly influenced by creeking designs, and although it was significantly shorter than its peers and incorporated a semi-planing hull, the higher-volume ends typical of creekers kept it from being good at cartwheeling.[75] Once again, a failure to best perform cartwheels also meant a failure at rodeo – at this point the greatest focus of the whitewater market.
Wave Sport better succeeded in this vein with the release of the 8’9” Kinetic in the same year. It was with this boat that the company made its first true entry into the main rodeo scene[76] along with its larger version, the Godzilla. The kayak was designed in part by Jackson and Chan Zawing, Wave Sport’s founder, who was one of the few baby boomers to truly grasp the forces of change that would come with the planing hull. The Kinetic design performed old school moves well[77] but incorporated modern characteristics in the hull and ends.
Addison made his mark in 1997 with the Hammer, a design that once again marked a step forwards in rodeo design.[78] At 9 feet it was not particularly short, but its thoughtful volume distribution and advanced hull made it successful at all things rodeo. Surprisingly, though, boats at the time still had not become completely rodeo specific; while play characteristics dominated many boats, even a model as in tune with the current rodeo trends as the Hammer was billed as a river runner. “As river running boats go,” reads one promotional statement, “the Hammer is the most fun ever.”[79] The model was the first to be released by Addison under a new name, Riot Kayaks, which he had founded following a recent departure from Savage.
The Necky Jive and the Perception Whip-it were two of the most popular new boats to hit the market during the year.[80] Both featured planing hulls and, like the Hammer, excelled at rodeo, especially with cartwheels. The Jive in particular utilized aggressive rails to its advantage.[81] The Whip-it excelled on waves and finally marked Perception’s entry into the planing-hulled market.[82]
Also joining the Whip-it in this respect was the Vertigo, Dagger’s follow-up to the RPM. Utilizing well-defined chines, a flat, fast-spinning hull, and a remarkably low length of 7’10.5”, it was greatly responsible for the Dagger team’s success in 1997’s rodeo circuit and proved the company was on par with the latest in play-focused design.[83] Contrasting the recent designs from Pyranha, Wave Sport, and Prijon, the Hammer, Jive, Whip-it, and Vertigo represented the style of design that would steer future rodeo design toward trends to follow.
THE ‘SLICEY’ ERA
With the technological advances of the late ‘90s also came more shifts in the character of the rodeo scene. A new vibe emerging from Generation X’s heightened involvement in whitewater kayaking had existed throughout the ‘90s, yet as the level of skill in river play further progressed toward the end of the decade, so too did the craze that surrounded the rodeo. As Generation Y began to enter the competitive circuit in the decade’s final years, the dawn of a new audience for freestyle became even more apparent.
The growth in numbers of ‘professional kayakers’ who “made a lifestyle, if not a living, of the rodeo” (KTH) and spent over 300 days a year on a river understandably raised the bar in freestyle. While the heightening distinction between ‘pro boater’ and ‘amateur’ led to an increasing disparity in the abilities of the two classes, an increase in the amount of instruction available (both in terms of published how-to guides and kayak ‘schools’) made the sport more accessible, further bolstering its popularity. Additionally, the younger kayaking generation was responsible for introducing a more social orientation to the practice of freestyle, which appealed to the X-games-crazed generations more than it had to the baby boomers (4). By this time, rodeo fully dominated amongst all things whitewater in the United States and Canada and had grown to reach comparable levels of popularity in Europe.
The demographic shift that increased throughout the ‘90s brought with it drastic changes to the nature of freestyle. Fully utilizing the benefits of the planing hull, this new breed of rodeo athlete popularized a more gymnastic, dynamic style of play, bringing concepts of movement from other popular extreme sports like snowboarding to the waves. This peaked around the end of the ‘90s, and it was at that point that the divergence began to occur between river-runners and playboats, as the more radical styles could no longer be supported by the river-runner.[84] Designs that were best tuned to the emerging changes in rodeo had too little volume in the ends, were too short, and had chines that were too aggressive to be incorporated into a successful river-running design.
The king amongst all tricks was still the cartwheel. The ‘slicey era’ peaked around this time, as boats that could best cut through the water when turned on edge had consistently been rewarded. Some hole competitions simply became a way of counting how many “ends” could be thrown in a set amount of time, with the best cartwheelers essentially spending entire 45-second rides performing the same motion consecutively. At the same time, the planing hull began to have its most profound effect on rodeo yet. The younger generation’s new schools of thought on how to play most profoundly affected wave freestyle, and the displacement hull would be finally left in the dust.
The advent of a move called the blunt marked perhaps the era’s greatest critical juncture, after which wave freestyle would finally reach the same popularity and level of technicality that existed in hole play. The exact origins of the move have never been fully resolved, as both Jackson and Addison claim its invention as their own while others such as Wright believe it was pioneered by surf kayakers before either of the two first performed it.[85] Regardless, the trick’s impact on freestyle was immense. The premise of the trick is a 180-degree turn in which the stern is lifted up while the boat pivots around the bow, exposing the majority of the hull to the air before it falls back onto the wave (with the paddler then facing backwards).
The movement became necessary to learn for all competitive rodeo athletes when it was revealed that 1999’s World Championships were to be held on a wave. Kayakers most confident with cartwheels in holes scrambled to perfect it. This also represented the final straw for the demise of the displacement hull.[86] It was at this World Championship Rodeo that Jackson performed the first “air blunt” in competition, in which the kayak is completely airborne (accomplished through using the planing hull to skip off the water’s surface as the turn motion is initiated). While the blunt had of course led to the invention of the air blunt, it was the latter that may have had the most impact on the evolution of freestyle. The completely new style of trick “opened the door to modern wave surfing and boat design,” according to Wright, who sees the ability to get off the water from the face of a wave as a “boat design and athlete miracle.”[87]
In 1998 Wave Sport released the X, a design featuring progressively low volume that not only made it a favorite in competition but also made cartwheels more accessible to the average kayaker. An “anti-trip chine” was also introduced, which through innovative positioning of the chine on the kayak provided the carving and controlling benefits of an aggressive chine without as high a risk of ‘catching an edge’ while spinning.[88] The boat capitalized on the successes of its 1997 precursors by further capitalizing on their other design features.[89]
The Wave Sport X was met with the release of Perception’s 3D. This boat was particularly reminiscent of existing squirboat designs, most notably a ‘scooped’ deck at the bow and stern of the kayak. In the same year, Savage released what would be its last industry-leading design, the Beast. At only 8 feet long, the boat represented Savage’s only moderate success without Addison and incorporated the same rodeo-winning “no-trip edges” that would come to be a common design feature in the following years.[90]
1999 brought the Mr. Clean and the Jib from Perception, the Alien from Prijon, the Zwo from Eskimo, and the XXX from Wave Sport, a class of boats which had fairly similar characteristics but experienced success to a variety of degrees. No radical new concepts were pioneered by these designs but instead the existing trends set in motion by the successful boats of 1997 and 1998 were further explored and often represented more dramatically, especially in terms of further volume reduction in the ends and, once again, in additional reductions in boat length.[91] Designers wanted smooth, streamlined hulls for ‘loose’ movement on waves and sliceyness in the bow and stern that would allow for cartwheel after cartwheel. To balance out the loss of bow and stern volume, designers packed more volume around the cockpit.[92]
The era’s most progressive boat, however, once again came from Corran Addison. 1998 brought Riot’s release of the Glide, often known as ‘the boat that changed the rules.’ Like the others of its generation, the Glide never offered anything truly unprecedented but built upon the successes of its predecessors. Addison’s design simply did what other boats had started to do more successfully, excelling in every aspect that a current playboat demanded. Famously, athletes at that year’s world championships lobbied for a last-minute change in how moves were scored because the boat gave the kayakers paddling it such a huge advantage that they felt the competition simply was not fair. The model was also well known at the time for being the boat in which thirty-three completely vertical ends (15 and a half cartwheels) were achieved in only twenty four seconds.[93] Even so, Riot’s greatest innovation was yet to come.
THE EARLY 2000s
With the new Millennium came a new revolution in boat design, led once again by Addison. Riot released the Disco, truly a boat ahead of its time. Both its length and volume distribution were characteristic of a design style that wouldn’t emerge in full force for years to come and diverged dramatically from the otherwise universal obsession with sliciness that continued through the early 2000s. To say it foreshadowed the decline of the slicey boat era by over a year would be an understatement – rather, it was a major force in paving the way for the eventual decline of this period. The design incorporated a degree of length-shortening that was unmatched anywhere else in the history of freestyle kayaking; the standard model measured in at a mere 6’11”, a length only a foot or so longer than kayaks would still be in over a decade.[94] Most significantly, volume was distributed more evenly throughout its short length, without any resemblance to the longer, low-volume ends that every other playboat sported at the time.
By jump-starting the ‘short boat’ wave, the Disco also directly led to the creation of many of the hole and wave moves still popular today. Steve Fisher notably used the boat to invent the airscrew, the pan-am, and the helix[95] (an aerial barrel roll, a blunt with the boat achieving greater-than-90-degree angle to the water, and an aerial 180-degree spin performed inverted, respectively). The trend the Disco set also greatly benefitted a type of hole move called a loop – essentially a frontflip – that had been invented by Wright over a decade earlier. The move had never caught on; Wright had been able to perform it in a Dancer but it became harder with the decrease in volume that eventually followed.[96] With dramatic shortening of boat length that followed the Disco, the loop and other tricks based off of the same principle became not only possible but also accessible. Moves such as the space godzilla (a tilted loop) and the McNasty (a frontflip initiated by a 180-degree spin) were pioneered during this time.[97]
Other boats released in 2000 and 2001, however, showed that the Disco would not end the slicey boat era immediately. The rapid pace of kayak production did not slow, either. In 2000, Dagger put out the Centrifuge and Ultrafuge, Perception the Ultraclean, Riot the Trickster, Pyranha the Prozone, Pijon the Luv and Machine, and Wave Sport the ForePlay.[98] As a result of these designs, the first years of the new millennium represented an important phase of freestyle’s progression. Beyond pioneering innovation, kayak design was also still making the technical tricks of the ‘90s more accessible than ever before.[99]
Interestingly, part of this expansion of accessibility came not from improved boat design but from improved boat sizing. In 2000, Pyranha produced the InaZone, not an especially remarkable boat in terms of design but notably the first playboat model to be released simultaneously in three different sizes.[100] Most companies had by then seen the advantage of creating two different sizes for each model or gradually expanding their size selections, but the InaZone was the first to meet a standard which would grow to become the norm and continue on to stand as such today. Manufacturers had finally grown to understand the close correlation between the performance of the planing hull and the kayaker’s weight (in relation to the boat’s volume).[101]
Better meeting the demands of a greater diversity of paddler sizes worked as a positive feedback loop of sorts for the paddling industry during this time. An increasing demand for kayaks had meant companies could afford to produce multiple sizes in an effort to reach more paddlers, which in turn made kayaking more accessible to greater numbers of people, further increasing playboating’s appeal and serving as the impetus for the addition of a third size to a company’s production line.
2000 also brought the Riot Trickster, followed by the Riot Dominatrix in 2001. Both boats took a step back from the Disco; both were longer – the Trickster by a whole foot – and resembled the other popular boats of their time more closely than the Disco had. Still, they incorporated progressive design characteristics, especially in regard to volume distribution, that helped them achieve similar success in performing the hottest new tricks. The volume distribution around the cockpit in particular looked remarkably similar to that of kayaks a decade later.
The other most significant design of 2001 was Wave Sport’s EZ, designed in part by Jackson. It capitalized on the successes of the XXX by making a similar design more user-friendly.[102] As with the Disco, its relatively short length of 6’9” made moves such as loops “instantly available to more people.”[103] It was also an excellent cartwheeler, still featuring slicey ends for such a short package. Jackson’s success with the design was proven when he won the 2001 World Championships in the very boat he helped to create.
By 2002, the slicey boat era has clearly started to wind down, as top models of the year showed less influence from the unrelenting focus on cartwheels that was present in previous years – evidence of a transition in hole-play priorities. Riot put out the Tekno, a design that yet again led the way in a successful distribution of volume. Extra gallons were cleanly packed around the cockpit. Yet the boat had a deeply forked bow and stern that would ultimately fall out of fashion – the forked bow particularly quickly. Wave Sport released the Ace, also during 2002, which followed in the footsteps of the EZ but failed to improve significantly on its predecessor.[104]
Perception would find itself at the end of its years in the whitewater industry when, in an unprecedented move in 2002, a corporation called the Confluence Holding Company bought both Dagger and Perception, deciding to keep Dagger in the whitewater market while shifting Perception into the touring kayak industry.[105] Perception’s final playboat model was the Full Tilt, which, while in the same class as the EZ, proved to be somewhat underwhelming.[106] Filling the vacancy, however, was a new American company called Liquidlogic Kayaks, which had its first success in the playboat market with the introduction of its Space Cadet model in 2002. The design, high in volume, popularized a swollen mid-section, which quickly made getting a larger amount of air a “requirement for loops.”[107] The company’s 2003 release of the Pocket Rocket, a similar design, further proved the success of these characteristics.
The 2003 release of the Wave Sport Transformer marked the introduction of a new feature: removable tips that attached to the stern and bow of the kayak. The feature was based on the premise that longer, low volume boats achieved greater stability with vertical tricks while shorter ones made aerial tricks easier.[108] Striking a balance between cartwheel-friendly characteristics and an aerial trick-friendly design was a fine line that has been walked by the playboat industry ever since the first ‘new-school’ aerial tricks; Wave Sport’s attempt to mitigate this was both bold and creative. The Transformer itself, though, was designed too wide to be a very successful design, and, as the lack of any later model with removable tips would show, the Transformer’s most characteristic trait also contributed to little success.
2003 also saw the success of another emerging newcomer to the freestyle scene, the New Zealand-based company Bliss-stick. The company struck a successful design with the progressive and popular RAD (Radical Aerial Device) model, which was, of all of the year’s models, perhaps the kayak most resembling the next generation of successful playboats. At only 6’2” long yet built with over 50 gallons of volume – 13 more gallons than in Wave Sport’s most recent model – the designers at Bliss-Stick had built upon the successes of the Space Cadet and found a particularly successful combination of sliciness and ‘pop’ (mainly a function of buoyancy). This buoyancy, itself a function of volume, was what the loop (and later its family of tricks) had so desperately needed during the slicey era’s low-volume designs. The higher the volume, the higher the boat will be rejected out of the water following the bow’s insertion into a hole. Likewise, the RAD led the way in hole play and certainly lived true to its name. It also featured a wide, low stern, which proved to be a major design breakthrough for wave surfing.[109] All hulls would soon get thicker chine to chine at the kayaks’ ends, especially at their tails, and Bliss Stick – although not terribly successful during the coming decade – proved to be a quiet pioneer.
A SLOWING PACE: THE MID-TO-LATE 2000s
In 2003, Jackson left Wave Sport to found his own company, Jackson Kayaks, which picked up where many of the brands that were fading had left off with innovation and progression.[110] One of the founding ideas of Jackson’s new company was to address the absence of children’s-sized kayaks, which was achieved in 2004 with the release of Jackson’s first boat, the Fun 1. Most notably, this boat quite literally cut in half the age at which young kayakers could begin to competently practice freestyle. The Jackson brand would continue to distinguish itself by selling itself to the family market. Jackson also distinguished itself by creating designs that made the big tricks pioneered around the turn of the century further accessible to amateur paddlers. In the words of Wright, who would himself join the Jackson team, Jackson “made boats that anyone could do Corran’s tricks in.”[111] The line of Jackson kayaks that followed would make the company the industry’s most successful both in terms of popularity and the number of Jackson-sponsored athletes on the podium.
The majority of the 2000s, however, would prove to be one of the less eventful periods in freestyle’s history. While consistent innovation by Jackson, Wave Sport, and Dagger would match a solid increase in the skill level of the world’s top paddlers, few new concepts were pioneered in design. During and beyond these years, companies like Jackson would sometimes update a model annually or every few years, introducing new changes but not creating a brand new model each year. Large numbers of new models still came out, with contributions from Pyranha, Liquidlogic, Bliss Stick, Riot and Fluid (a newcomer) complimenting those of the leading three brands, but the industry pulled back from the frenzied pace of the previous decade.
Only the emergence of ‘combo moves’ towards the end of the decade were, arguably, indicative of true innovation in the era’s paddling itself and not just kayakers getting better at what they already knew with more refined boats. The improvements in existing technique and boat design concepts, however, did not lack impressive results. The loop had already overtaken the hole-boating scene, but paddlers reached new heights in their quest for huge air during these years and practiced increasingly difficult moves like the phonix monkey (a loop initiated through a full pirouette) and the back loop (a back flip).
These moves were in fact just the re-arrangement of previous ideas, not new concepts of motion, but they have remained not only incredibly technical and demanding of the kayaker but also arguably the most spectacular moves of freestyle’s history. Advances in freestyle technique on waves were just as noticeable. The airscrew began to reach its peak during these years and would come to represent the pinnacle of wave maneuvers. Fisher’s other creations of the early 2000s, notably the pan-am and helix, were also staples, along with the even older air blunt. Clean spins disappeared as a serious objective, but even the best big wave riders to this day clearly still enjoy the fun of spinning a loose hull on big waves.[112] The decade also saw an increasing ability amongst both boats and kayakers to take tricks that were once harder to perform and bring them to any river, not only ones with the largest and best features. “It’s cool to throw airscrews on a two-foot wave and do huge loops in a six-inch high hole because we can,” Wright comments.[113]
2005 notably marked the launch of the Jackson All Star, a boat later recognized as the most winning freestyle kayak in history[114] and one of the few kayaks in the era that significantly changed the way that kayaks looked. It took the newer concepts from the most progressive boats of the early 2000s and refined them, beefing up the volume and creating a sleeker, more rounded profile while hardly altering the length. Following the 2005 All Star, boats would only continue to shorten slightly. The boat also incorporated a short, squared off stern that would eventually be present on all freestyle models later in the decade.
Sales in the freestyle kayak market peaked in 2006, to be followed by a decline in both boat sales and the amount of money entering the industry through athlete sponsorships. Freestyle, no longer referred to as rodeo, had lost much of the zealous drive provided by the cartwheel generation of the mid-to-late ‘90s, and with that professional kayakers of all disciplines found increasing difficulty making money from sponsorships. By the mid-2000s, elite paddlers who could have made a living off the rodeo circuit years ago now turned to such pursuits as film-making and instructing to make a living out of kayaking, which certainly has had its advantages within the whitewater community. Still, this paralleled a decrease in numbers of whitewater kayakers overall.
“I've seen it all from the beginning,” says veteran playboater Ryan Whetung. “It started as a small group, grew huge with a lot of opportunity. And now it has scaled back again.”[115] Whitewater kayaking as a whole, not just freestyle, began to take on a state of increased obscurity in the mainstream eye. This decline in whitewater kayaking’s popularity as a whole was actually in large part the result of the freestyle scene losing the appeal it had achieved a decade earlier.
THE MODERN ERA OF FREESTYLE
While the most recent phase of freestyle’s evolution is barely four years long, the hallmark of this most recent chapter is easily distinguishable: the combo move. During the 2000s, kayakers had begun experimenting with linking moves together in both hole and wave play, an idea that would truly take off in freestyle’s most recent half-decade and become a necessity for competition in the most recent few years. The obsession with highly technical combos would arguably lead to a more precision-driven representation of freestyle than in any years past.[116]
A combo move on either a hole or a wave necessitates at the very least initiating a second trick immediately after completion of the first. On a wave, this sometimes means releasing off of the wave for the second trick using the bounce created by landing the first trick. A similar concept often applies in hole play – with a space godzilla to cartwheel combo, for example, the paddler must initiate the cartwheel with the downward movement created by landing the loop.
One could argue that, once again, freestyle is simply seeing progression based on what has been done before – and in some respects this is true. The combo, however, represents such a heightened demand for specific technique that it is fully deserving of its progressive status. (The first combo move, professional kayaker Patrick Camblin’s ‘bread-n-butter’ – a pan-am to back blunt or back pan-am – was quite a novel concept at the time.)
If boat evolution had become less radical in its innovation during these years, its progression had instead come also from further detailed refinement in existing designs. The 2010 model of the Jackson All Star was notable for slightly sinking the stern, making the short design go faster. Jackson also pioneered using continuous rocker on playboats,[117] with the previously all-popular concept of ‘kick rocker’ (created by the ends of the hull angling up drastically at only one point at each end)[118] being replaced by a more graceful and constant curvature that once only existed on river runners and creekers.
A final innovation seen in boat design that became apparent was one that had not been seen since playboating’s earliest years: a change in kayak material. While the idea had surfaced earlier in the 2000s and would not be embraced by the vast majority of the market, a switch among many elite paddlers back to composite kayaks grew significantly during freestyle’s most recent years. Fragile as always, the composite build can be utilized in situations where contact with rocks is not an issue. Still, it remains practical for only the most expert kayakers due to this specific demand as well as its high cost.
The composite material of choice, carbon fiber, created a kayak that was not only significantly lighter than plastic ones but also much more rigid. Even plastic boats with the best internal support fail to maintain their shape completely when bouncing off the face of a wave, with the boat absorbing some of the energy that would be used to launch a kayaker into the air. With carbon fiber came the ability to utilize completely the dynamic forces of a surging wave, allowing for bigger air, easier combos, and more dramatic tricks – all hallmarks of freestyle’s most recent years regardless of boat material.
CONCLUSION
It would be easy to dismiss the evolution of freestyle kayaking as the same sort of progression that occurs in all freestyle sports. Be it freestyle skiing, skateboarding, or BMX, freestyle sports generally have origins in simple transportation that, once transformed into a method of play, expand from a set of basic maneuvers to ever-more-complicated tricks. What makes freestyle kayaking’s evolution unique, though, is the amount that the freestyle kayak has changed in such a great diversity of aspects. Few other sports have had changes to their equipment so completely revolutionize the way they are practiced.
Such change, as the study of the sport’s progression shows, was a result of both innovative paddling and innovate boat design. More specifically, the expansion of the planes of motion on which play occurred proved to be the most significant trend – first horizontally with spins, then vertically with enders and squirts, then combining the two with the pirouette, then vertically on a rotated plane with the cartwheel, and so on until freestyle kayaking encompassed maneuvers utilizing virtually all possible directions of motion and axes of movement, with the performance of the maneuvers also very frequently going aerial. Equally important was the shortening of the kayak and the continuous redistribution of volume within a general kayak shape. These changes in playboat design took kayaks from being long with high-volume ends to medium-length with as little volume in the ends as possible to short with carefully proportioned bows and sterns combining the two approaches.
Knowledge of these trends in boat design and the nature of play is critical to understanding freestyle kayaking’s history and also helpful in more holistically understanding playboating today. What does it reveal, though, about freestyle kayaking’s future? An expansion of the directions in which kayakers are expected to move to be competitive in freestyle correlates to heightened physical demands of the sport on athletes. From this, it is no stretch to conclude that, now more than ever, paddlers with the greatest athleticism have a leg up even before pure technique is put to test. While even the most elite professional competition is by no means dominated only by young, exceptionally fit paddlers, an aerial space godzilla or a pistol flip (a McNasty on a wave), for example, demand much more agility than an ender or even a cartwheel.
The carbon kayak is another factor that will no doubt continue to influence freestyle kayaking in the future. Paddlers will continue to reach greater heights in aerial competition, perform difficult maneuvers with greater ease, and string together increasingly long combos, all mostly through the increasing level of skill of amongst kayakers. The superiority of carbon kayaks, however, most significantly in big wave freestyle, has certainly contributed to this recent progression and is poised to exert an even greater influence as their use starts to expand into the mainstream market. Freestyle kayaking also awaits potential advances in composite construction, quite possibly veering away from the use of carbon fiber, that make the composite boats cheaper and more durable – a potential for innovation that, if realized, could further magnify the effect of the composite playboat.
Kayak length and volume distribution continue to be highly-analyzed elements of freestyle progression but a clear reduction in the amount they change year to year is seen when observing trends in playboating’s previous 10 years. While the decrease of kayak length will ultimately be stopped by the length of the kayaker, length change has already plateaued in freestyle’s most recent years with boats now generally falling within a certain range (most often between 5’8” and 5’10”).
Volume distribution proves to be much more unique to each boat and is in theory always refinable. Once again, similarities in recent trends do show that boat designs currently do not differ as greatly year-to-year as they did in the past in regards to this characteristic. Still, play will continue to evolve and volume distribution will likely be the first characteristic to change. It is quite possible, too, that boats will come to be designed with a particular kind of river feature in mind, with volume design more specifically tailored to either hole or wave performance. Additionally, the increase in use of carbon boats means that more paddlers are having custom models made, meaning that a great diversity of kayak body designs with varying distributions of volume are being introduced, even if the same general tendencies are present.
While it is easy to presume that freestyle evolution will soon grind to a halt, one must remember that similar assumptions could have been made before previous advances in play or boat design and that there have been many periods in freestyle’s evolution that were equally devoid of radical change. A look at freestyle kayaking’s history will show that it is very hard to predict advances in playboating, with new moves necessitating alterations to boat design often popping up in an unprecedented manner. Even if progression in design has slowed considerably, leading boat designs still differ enough to demonstrate that not all designers agree completely on the right characteristics for a playboat, which signifies that opportunity to further innovate and improve remains. Models even within the last five years have progressed remarkably in the fine-tuned perspective of elite paddlers. “Every year I don't think kayaks will get better,” says Whetung. “Then they do.”
What is on many paddlers’ minds when looking into the future, however, is not necessarily the next big trick. Few paddlers disagree that the future of whitewater kayaking in general relies not on going bigger or throwing more technical combos but simply on increasing popularity and mainstream recognition of the sport, particularly with a younger audience. The heightened level of paddling achieved by professional kayakers may, in fact, be partially responsible for creating the recent decrease in participation. Whetung explains, “I think freestyle kayaking became popular because of people seeing tricks and saying ‘wow, I want to try that!’ Now people see the latest combo huge air trick on some crazy wave and say, ‘there is no way I want to do that.’ ” Leaders within the whitewater kayaking community, however, have demonstrated the commitment and potential to work towards increasing its participant base and accordingly improving the sport’s longevity. Few are genuinely worried that whitewater kayaking and even freestyle in particular will become a lost art.
On a final note, while studying how freestyle kayaking has evolved gives perspective on freestyle’s current and possible future representations, it also allows for greater insight in understanding why freestyle evolved as it did. Even with a clear map of how boats and tricks evolved, it is more difficult to grasp what drove this evolution to progress so quickly and profoundly. Some influences are more obvious, such as the growth of extreme sports – in particularly extreme freestyle sports – within the last 50 years. Most valuable to understand, however, are any factors relating to this progression that are more unique to freestyle kayaking. The combination of freestyle kayaking’s participant-driven industry and its unique manner of competition reveal themselves to be perhaps the most influential and important of these factors.
What makes the freestyle kayak industry unique and important in driving rapid, profound progression is the fact that, quite consistently, its top producers are closely linked to top performers. It is not uncommon for top producers to be top kayakers themselves if not be the recipients of direct input from freestyle’s elite. A study[119] shows that regular users of equipment are much more efficient in innovating than producers. What can be seen with freestyle is a major overlap between the two, meaning that those with the greatest knowledge and perspective of freestyle progression through its representation in tricks have also been the ones creating the boats to perform new tricks in. With many other sports, equipment promoted by leading athletes oftentimes represents little input from the expert athlete and more of a marketing campaign. With freestyle kayaking, on the other hand, the designers are directly incentivized to innovate because, being users of their products, they are creating their own equipment.
This concept is closely tied to the role of freestyle competition in driving evolution. Take Eric Jackson, for example, a leading boat designer as well as a winning competitor (user). His motive to innovate comes from his dependence on what he creates for his own success in competition. According to Jackson, “Competition is 90 percent of the influence” for creating progressive design. Putting the kayaks he paddles on the mainstream market, while the basis for his highly successful company, simply “funds” this personal quest to create the best kayak for him and his team of sponsored athletes. “Being the best one on the water … and a boat designer is a good combo to strive for if you want to lead the way,” he says.[120]
By being both a leading paddler and designer, he is able to bridge any disconnect between users and producers because he himself (with his own competitive ambitions) embodies both. Jackson’s model is seen elsewhere in freestyle kayaking; even if the company’s owner, designer, and lead kayaker are not embodied by the same person, close teams of sponsored athletes working with designers achieve the same effect. By heightening the efficiency at which innovation becomes represented in production, this occurrence within the freestyle kayak industry is greatly responsible for the quick, dramatic evolution of freestyle kayaking.
Studying the themes and influences discussed in this paper is rarely the focus of whitewater enthusiasts. As discussed, doing so can be a great tool for bettering one’s personal understanding of the freestyle kayaking. With increased emphasis and knowledge of playboating’s roots, however, the freestyle kayaking community could also better its approach to confronting its greatest challenge yet: continuing the strong legacy of past and present freestyle kayaking in years to come.
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The idea to focus my CAPS research project on whitewater kayaking came to me some time in the early winter of 2013. With very few other ideas, I did what any researcher-to-be would do: I Googled a broad term related to my topic, just to see what came up. It is the Internet equivalent of cautiously dipping a toe in a swimming pool, testing the water while remaining uncommitted to entering.
I typed in “Old school whitewater kayaking,” which generally refers to the years when kayaks were still long and pointy, and I clicked on the first hit – some footage from the late 1980s of kayakers on the Ottawa River. I had expected to see standard river-running, but instead I quickly noticed that the paddlers were intentionally letting themselves be “surfed,” or held in the same spot relative to the shoreline, by the rapid’s big white piles of foam – indicative not of traditional river-running but of river play. Spins, surfing backwards, and a paddle twirl confirmed that these kayakers were in fact engaging in “playboating,” what would come to be called freestyle kayaking.
I was also familiar with another aspect of the footage. The rapid, I quickly realized, was one of the same stretches of the Ottawa River that I had frequented the past summer – a playboating-friendly section known as McCoy’s. Despite paddling to a soundtrack from a different era, the kayakers in this video were playing in the exact same spots in which I myself had learned the basics of freestyle kayaking not long ago. I sat, intrigued, and watched the whole video through.
I compared with this video a mental image of my own footage from the previous summer and pictured myself surfing in those same holes. The boat I had paddled, a freestyle kayak fairly typical of modern boat design called the Jackson All Star, is barely over half the length of the boats in this video, I realized. Its volume is also proportioned completely differently than that of the long, sleek boats typical of the old school era. Perhaps the only notable similarity in design was the kayaks’ material, plastic. I was impressed by how dramatically kayak design had changed in the scant 25 years since the filming of this video.
I dug up some more old kayaking footage online and found that the other main component of freestyle kayaking during this time was a move called the ender, in which the kayaker plugs the front, or bow, of their kayak underwater using a ‘hole,’ after which the buoyancy of the kayak bounces the boat and the paddler up into the air. Along with surfing and a move called the ‘squirt,’ in which the kayaker brings the bow up unto the air instead of the stern, this was pretty much the extent of playboating at the time. I had known that the old school playboating during this era was very basic compared to the tricks performed today, but once again I was struck by how much play in kayaks had changed over only a few decades. It doesn’t take someone even remotely familiar with freestyle kayaking to understand, simply through looks, how drastic the difference is between freestyle kayaking’s beginning stages and its current representation, both in terms of the moves and the kayak design.
I began to realize that there must have been an incredible transformation in the way this sport was practiced to account for such a dramatic change over such a relatively short existence. My immediate question was, “What happened?” I wanted to know how this remarkable evolution had occurred and what it had looked like. My search for an answer to these questions came to be the driving force behind my investigation and subsequent interpretation of freestyle kayak evolution.
It wasn’t long in my search before two fundamental truths about the nature of this evolution became apparent. One was that no single innovation is responsible for the majority of the progression that freestyle kayaking has achieved. There have been plenty of critical junctures in freestyle’s evolution since the first paddlers played in whitewater – junctures resulting from innovations with lasting, transformative impacts on the sport. It is in fact the abundance of these separate watershed moments, however, that makes the path of freestyle’s evolution a complex journey of ever-improving technique and equipment as opposed to a story dominated by a single major metamorphosis, or even a couple of major metamorphoses.
This makes identifying and understanding the extensive series of individual innovations in freestyle’s history essential to understanding how freestyle evolved. It necessitates focusing on the chronology, the interconnectedness, and the legacies of these innovations. So while I offer my own conclusions on which trends in freestyle’s history have been most impactful and even conclude by generalizing about the main driving forces of progression, it would be an overstatement to mistakenly attribute the whole of freestyle’s progression to these few key elements of the evolution.
The other concept that became apparent almost immediately in my initial research was that the story of the evolution of freestyle tricks could not be told without that of the evolution of the freestyle kayak. These two stories, I found, have been intertwined incredibly closely throughout every twist and turn of the evolution. This is understandably so considering the important role played by the design of a kayak in determining what can actually be performed in the kayak. That particular idea is one to which all freestyle kayakers who have experienced a variety of boat designs learn to understand but one which those unfamiliar with freestyle kayaking may have a hard time appreciating. Yet understanding how two components of one sport – kayak tricks and boat design – have combined together to drive progression illuminates many aspects of the nature of freestyle evolution. Accordingly, it seems necessary to place any conclusions resulting from an exploration of these themes within the framework of how freestyle evolved, the explanation of which requires a detailed look at freestyle’s history.
Interestingly, I could never draw a conclusion as to whether advances in boat design consistently preceded the creation of new tricks or vice versa. It makes logical sense that kayakers pushed the limits of what could be done in their kayaks and responded to this progression by altering boat design to better suit their advances in play. In many instances in freestyle’s evolution, this seems to be the case. Yet innovative professional kayaker Steve Fisher, who is responsible for creating a number of today’s most popular wave tricks over a decade ago, proves this is not always the case. He credits paddling the most advanced boat on the market with new technology as what led him to his immensely influential innovations. (In his case it was the prior invention of the “planing hull” that allowed for his tricks to be possible in a kayak.)[1] Clay Wright’s invention of the loop – an ender-turned-front flip – is another particularly interesting example of the complexity of this idea. After he envisioned the loop while playing with toy kayaks and learned to perform it himself, trends in boat design brought about new characteristics in the era’s emerging kayaks that were unfavorable to performing his maneuver.[2] In a twist of fate, the loop would later become one of the most influential kayak tricks of all time and currently continues to heavily influence boat design. It is clear that while innovations in boat design are not consistently the result of previous progression in kayak maneuvers, the reverse is also not always the case. What emerges, then, when trying to make a broad statement about the nature of all trick inventions is not unlike the classic ‘chicken or the egg?’ dilemma. Major innovations in freestyle, then, must be examined on a case-by-case basis if one is to reconcile the influence of paddler innovation with the influence of boat design innovation. This does not mean larger connections cannot be drawn – it says quite the opposite, actually – but simply that universal statements concerning this idea are difficult to support. Once again, in this respect kayak evolution is seen as being best explored through a detailed history.
The answer behind the question of why freestyle evolved as did – not how it evolved or what that evolution looked like but why it progressed so quickly and dramatically – proved to be equally elusive. It wasn’t until I was well into my research that I finally understood the driving forces behind the multi-decade journey I was studying. These influences, such as competition, for example, would prove to be ingrained thoroughly enough in the story of freestyle evolution that a full understanding of the evolution itself was necessary, I decided, if I was to draw any conclusions about freestyle kayaking from these influences – reason yet again to explore the evolution itself at every twist and turn of its progression. While important to understanding the nature of evolution, the why question about freestyle’s progress would have no basis through which to be explored if not examined in the context of freestyle kayaking’s intriguing history.
Why study the evolution of freestyle kayaking in the first place? As says the common justification for having history requirements in school, there’s no better way to understand the present than through the context of the past. In kayaking terms, we see this evident in the relationship between modern freestyle and its old school roots, which, while not commonly the focus of attention in the world of whitewater paddling, is a close and significant relationship indeed. This is illustrated, for example, through the fact that the majority of the whitewater kayak industry’s top playboat designers are seasoned kayakers with a solid foundation of experience in old school kayaking and a deep understanding of freestyle’s past. It is evident that there is value in knowledge of freestyle history when involving oneself with even the most modern aspects of freestyle.
As I shifted my focus early on from simply learning to creating a thesis and informing others – both freestyle kayakers and non-kayakers – I attempted to hone in on what matters most about freestyle kayaking’s evolution. I knew I wanted to provide through my thesis’s supporting evidence what will give a reader the best foundation for further discovery in the realm of freestyle kayaking, whether that be learning about other aspects of the sport, being able to appreciate and understand what one sees when viewing current freestyle, or even increasing one’s skill set as a kayaker. I certainly do not attempt to instruct, nor am I interested in simply providing a survey of freestyle kayaking history without driving towards deeper conclusions. My paper’s objective is offering what the past can teach in order to provide a more holistic understanding of freestyle kayaking, which in turn could benefit anyone interested in freestyle, kayaker or not, in a variety of ways.
The question mentioned previously of why freestyle kayaking has evolved – of what influences drove the progression – has the potential to reveal great insight into the significance of the evolution. In regard to my objective with this thesis paper, however, answering it better serves as a way to conclude and continue beyond the lessons of freestyle’s history than as means of achieving the greatest understanding of the evolution itself. Accordingly, my angle of attack with the compilation of my research has been to answer my first simple question of “What happened?” I return to the curiosity that arose when comparing old footage to modern playboating and attempt to explain what is responsible for the vast discrepancy in methods of play and boat design that exists between the two. The evolution that connects them, I found, is a fascinating story.
I open my argument and subsequent historical exploration on the premise that such drastic evolution resulted from two main phenomena. One is continuous innovation in boat design that has been achieved most consistently through a gradual shortening of kayak length and a constant change in the shape and volume distribution of the kayaks. The second is an expansion of the axes – the planes of motion (or “dimensions” as some in playboating’s past would term them) – on which freestyle is performed. These are major themes present throughout freestyle history, concepts that show up enough in the course of the evolution to play a strong – and I would argue the strongest – role in guiding it. They by no means represent every mark of progress in freestyle kayaking’s history and have their limitations. A laundry list of innovations, however, would do us no good in truly grasping the thematic and developmental nature of freestyle evolution; it is this nature that, in the form of a thesis, my research attempts to reveal.
NOTES
Just as it is necessary to understand traffic patterns before learning to drive a car, one must understand the basic workings of whitewater before beginning to understand kayak freestyle. The premise of playboating throughout all of its existence has been to utilize abnormalities in a flowing current instead of avoiding or passing through them, which is generally the goal when simply trying to get from the top of a rapid to the bottom. This point A to point B approach to whitewater is the hallmark of traditional river-running. This approach also applies to the popular whitewater discipline called ‘creeking’ or ‘creekboating’ (in which paddlers run steep rivers, often including waterfalls) and applies especially to racing, in which, even if gates are present, the objective is to move downriver as efficiently as possible.
The two types of abnormalities that are most commonly used in river play are standing waves and what are called hydraulics or ‘holes.’ Surfing on standing waves can easily be likened to surfing ocean waves, with the main difference being only that on a river the paddler stays in the same spot relative to the shoreline, as does the wave. Gravity simply keeps the kayaker lower on the face of the wave, unless the kayak presents enough surface area to the oncoming water for the current to pull the kayak up and over the wave.
A kayaker surfing a hole, on the other hand, utilizes water recirculating back upstream – a common occurrence in whitewater – to his or her advantage. Holes are created when water flowing over an underwater drop continues downwards along with the riverbed. As a result, water nearer to the surface moves to fill the open area where the current would have flowed had there not been a drop. Another very common abnormality in current is the ‘eddy line,’ the line at which a river’s moving current meets up against a pool of stagnant water at the river’s edge called an eddy. This feature is most commonly used for the ‘squirt’ maneuver and for a more specialized form of playboating called squirtboating.
As mentioned before, the dedicated river-runner will not seek out such abnormalities as large waves or holes unless it poses a strategic advantage. Holes in particular can be dangerous as a result of their potential to be retentive. The freestyle kayaker, however, intentionally seeks out these abnormalities – choosing ones that are safe enough to enter and that possess particular characteristics that best suit their style of play. These abnormalities become “river features,” as opposed to obstacles. Just as an alpinist may seek out a steeper, more difficult route up a mountain while an easier path exists, playboaters can create their own challenge out of whatever whitewater provides.
A few notes about terminology: True to widely-accepted usage, I often use the term ‘playboating’ interchangeably with the term ‘freestyle kayaking’ to describe a kayaking with the intent of play. (Likewise, a ‘playboat’ is a ‘freestyle kayak’.) Some believe that ‘freestyle’ denotes only modern play, while others view the label as applying specifically to modern competitive play. Others still use it to specify that play is stationary (with the paddler continuously maintaining a surf of a river feature), as opposed to the more descriptive term ‘down-river freestyle.’ Kayak manufacturers in particular may designate a ‘playboat’ as any kayak – including river-running–play hybrids – that is designed for play, while the term ‘freestyle kayak’ is specific to boats designed only for play. The multitude of varying opinions in regard to the relationship of these terms was part of the reason why I chose the simplest commonly accepted definition. Further confusion is added to the mix with the label of ‘rodeo,’ but that term, due to the rather specific timeframe of its popular usage, specifies old-school competitive playboating up until the early 2000s, when it became replaced by ‘freestyle.’ I use ‘playboat’ to describe any kayak, whether of the ‘rodeo’ or so called ‘freestyle’ era, which is designed for play. Finally, the use of the word ‘boat’ to describe a whitewater kayak – a common usage amongst kayakers dating back to the 1970s – simply means what it sounds like.
Other forms of play that I intentionally avoid discussing in my writing are also worth mentioning here. For the duration of my project I have wanted to explore only standard stationary play of the variety that is popular in competition today, as trying to branch off into down-river freestyle and squirtboating, I felt, would distract me from my focus on telling the story of the modern freestyle kayak. (Neither down-river freestyle nor squirtboating relies on such kayaks.) I soon learned, though, that the development of both subcategories of river play were crucial to the earlier stages of what is now freestyle. River play started off including many tricks that were essentially down-river freestyle tricks (meaning that maintaining a surf in a stationary feature was not required), and squirtboating paved the way for much of the more traditional playboating that I was interested in. As a result, I focus on these forms of play when necessary but do not attempt to include their whole stories in my exploration of freestyle.
Finally, freestyle kayaking walks a fine line between ‘sport’ and ‘form of recreation,’ and I have made my best attempt to use whatever term is most fitting depending on the timeframe and circumstance. Such a distinction can be very telling about trends in playboating as a whole. Difficulty arises, though, because individual definitions of what constitutes a sport vary widely and often overlap with views on what defines recreation. With general playboating, I set a low bar for acceptance as a ‘sport’ as many kayakers today do, often referring to it as such when what is being practiced resembles techniques used in the competition of the appropriate time period.
THE BEGINNINGS OF PLAY
The story of any type of kayak begins, of course, with the primitive boats of ancient peoples. It was not until thousands of years later, however, that kayaking became embraced as a form of recreation and our story of freestyle kayaking truly begins to pick up. Documented use of kayaks for enjoyment, not solely for transportation, does not appear until the early 1900s.[3] Running rapids had also been a part of kayaking for much of the kayak’s history, but it represented another major step towards the beginnings of river play when whitewater became sought after for fun, as opposed to begrudged.
Competition in whitewater first emerged in 1940 with a race held in Maine and sponsored by the Appalachian Mountain Club.[4] Even at this time, though, kayaking in whitewater for enjoyment represented a wild fringe of outdoor recreation. When fiberglass began to replace wood as the material of choice for whitewater boats in the 1950s, kayaking down rapids was opened to more than just a select few “lunatics.”[5] Even still, those who chose a kayak to tackle whitewater – and especially those who soon went on to pioneer playboating – remained squarely outside the domain of mainstream paddle-sports.
It was with the pioneering river-running style of American whitewater enthusiast Walt Blackader that the first direct origins of freestyle were finally represented. While some kayakers may very well have spun a paddle around while floating down a rapid in years prior, Blackader was the first person to seriously focus on developing methods of play in whitewater, which he did starting in 1968 on rivers of the American West. His technique, which mainly involved intentionally passing over waves sideways or backwards, was considered extreme, especially when performed in large rapids with sizable features as he often did. As a small community began to form around Blackader and his early river play, fiberglass kayaks specialized to the demands of this style of paddling emerged out of garages and back yards. The first half of the 1970s saw paddlers hand rolling and continuing to run rapids backwards or sideways, all considered techniques outside of regular whitewater kayaking.[6]
AN EARLY REVOLUTION: PLASTIC TAKES THE RIVERS
Freestyle kayaking was still in its infancy when it experienced arguably the most transformative innovation of its existence. In 1973, the plastic molding company Hollowform produced the first whitewater kayak made completely out of plastic, beginning a trend that forever changed the face of all whitewater kayaking.[7] It would come to represent in the eyes of many the greatest single advancement in the whole of the paddling industry, let alone in freestyle.[8]
From a designer’s perspective, the benefits of the new plastic boats being produced were obvious. Even the first plastics to be introduced constituted a great leap in durability over fiberglass or other composite designs, in which layers of easily pliable fabric are shaped into a mold and made brittle and glossy through the application of resins. ‘Glass’ boats, as they were often called, could not withstand hard encounters with rocks – a near-inevitable occurrence in most whitewater paddling – making constant repair necessary. In comparison, the new plastic boats were bombproof, capable of absorbing hit after hit with no more than a scratch or dent at worst. While dangerously hard blows to a craft or pinning (getting stuck between a solid object in the river and the force of the water behind) and subsequent warping of the boat remained hazardous, the choice for many experienced whitewater enthusiasts was clear. However, the member of the whitewater community most affected by this innovation was the novice kayaker. Plastic’s durability on and off the river resulted in kayaks that were more easily put to use and maintained by the kayak instruction market, the rental fleet market, and even the average whitewater kayaker.
Plastic kayaks also appealed to a diversity of groups within the paddle-sport community as a result of their economic advantages. The cost of constant repair – previously an accepted fixture in whitewater kayaking – was easily negated, but more importantly, this new breed of kayak of was considerably easier for companies to manufacture and transport, in turn making them cheaper to purchase. An “affordability barrier” that had previously existed with fiberglass designs was broken; whitewater kayaks were soon carried in sporting goods stores and easily rented, making them accessible to average families. This economic factor was furthered by the longevity of the plastic designs over their composite forefathers, which resulted in the emergence of a substantial market for secondhand kayaks sold at an even lower price.[9]
The effects of the ensuing transition to plastic boats were sweeping. The image of general whitewater kayaking changed from one of a niche activity for adrenaline junkies to a more normal recreational experience, and the number of paddlers interested in whitewater grew. Yet the swelling ranks of whitewater kayakers in conjunction with the emergence of heartier kayaks meant too that increased attention was specifically paid to playboating. Plastic boats could better withstand the rigors of play, in which the risk of contact with rocks could be especially high.
A hike in the whitewater kayaking population also meant that innovation in boat design would be more greatly rewarded. While some understandably resented the emergence of industry in the whitewater scene, the larger kayak producers that would be introduced through the advent of the plastic boat would come to be the major source of progression in boat design. These companies and their designers proved instrumental in freestyle’s progression.
Still, composite boat construction did not disappear, and not just through the efforts of glass boat devotees. Plastic would never replace the demand for composites with the customized ‘squirt boats’ that would soon develop, while the slalom market would grow to become a significant user of glass construction. In a twist of fate, composite construction (this time using carbon fiber) would even come to make a return to the elite freestyle scene starting in the later 2000s, once a few of its characteristics became recognized as preferable when the danger of contact with rocks in particular play situations was eliminated. In freestyle kayaking’s most recent years, ‘carbon’ boats have even been made commercially available in stock models, intended for expert users. The switch to plastic, however, was a permanent one for the mainstream playboat market.
Despite its immense impact on freestyle kayaking’s future, the advent of the plastic whitewater kayaks was only the first of many innovations to come in the following decades that would alter the course of playboating. It would not be an unreasonable stretch to call it the most influential innovation of freestyle’s evolution, but it is certainly not the only defining moment in that evolution. Without it, early play may never have progressed to the freestyle kayaking that exists today, but the same can be said of other key moments of freestyle progression. Additionally, unlike a visionary innovation in playboating or boat design, the switch to plastic could also be considered inevitable. Accordingly, this materials innovation is best seen as a powerful platform for the progression in design features and tricks that would soon come in kayak design.
OLD-SCHOOL PLAY
The next advancement in the course of freestyle’s early development was the growth of stationary play, a major milestone that, unlike the introduction of plastic kayaks, passed somewhat quietly. During the mid 1970s, kayakers began to explore purposefully entering holes as a means of creating added challenge. While in its early stages this meant punching through holes, it was not long before paddlers who were tired of simply paddling through familiar rapids were intentionally letting themselves be surfed by river features – the major principle of freestyle even in its most current representation today. Kayakers further experimented by increasing the amount of control they had of their surf and were soon moving from side to side in holes.[10]
The second half of the 1970s included a number of exceptionally notable advances in the evolution of freestyle. The first was the advent of the backsurf. The length of kayaks at the time made the boats naturally surf holes sideways; surfing forwards, or upriver, was the obvious instinct on waves. Simply surfing one of these features backwards marked the true expansion into the horizontal axis (or horizontal plane) of movement in stationary play.
Freestyle kayaking also saw its first formal competition in 1976 on the Salmon River of Idaho, followed by the ‘Stanley Rodeo’ in Stanley, Idaho in 1977.[11] Calling it a ‘rodeo’ made sense, as paddlers dropped into holes to prove they could withstand the ride – interestingly intended mainly as a representation of their river-running skills – while also attempting to show off any creativity they could muster. The first rodeos caught on and other similar competitions began to pop up around the American West, drawing paddlers from as far as the East Coast. At the 1979 Stanley Rodeo, the first cash prizes ever awarded for a playboating competition were introduced. (Within five years, cash prizes at rodeos had reached four-figure sums).[12] While a rodeo would come to be defined simply as a playboating competition, at this time a rodeo often included racing and squirtboat competition in addition to competitive hole-riding, or “hot-dogging.”[13]
The late 1970s brought a final major innovation to freestyle by adding to river play’s limited trick repertoire. The expansion into the vertical realm of play was made simultaneously with the leap into aerial playboating through the advent of what would become freestyle’s most classic trick: the ender. The ender was initiated by plugging the bow of the kayak into moving water, usually utilizing a hole or the trough of a wave to do so. The buoyancy of the submerged bow would then cause the entire boat to be thrust back up into the air, sometimes rejecting the kayak powerfully enough to make the entire boat clear the water,[14] which was an especially impressive feat considering that most boats at this time were still over 13 feet long.[15] In respect to the principle on which it worked and its potential to get an entire kayak airborne, the ender also served as an ancestor to the loop, which involves turning the same type of pop produced by an ender into a front flip.
The ender would eventually become eclipsed by the cartwheel and fall out of fashion, but few other moves are looked back upon with the same fondness. Paddlers described the move as producing a remarkable sensation when performed with the high-volume boats of the time – something that disappeared with the reduction in boat volume, which would come with the increased popularity of the cartwheel. In its heyday, the trick was viewed as the ‘holy grail’ of river play.[16] “Enders give you a chance to lose all your inhibitions and behave like a foolish kid,” writes the author of one instructional manual.[17] Professional kayaker Eric Jackson, who would go on to become a freestyle champion and industry-leading boat designer, was a self-professed “ender freak” who couldn’t get enough of the move during his early years. Known as the “Ender King” at the time, he was largely responsible for popularizing the move in New England.[18]
The early 1980s were marked by a continuation of the ender’s rise in popularity. With the trick’s spectacle and expansion of the axes on which play could be performed, it was clear by the 1980s that the craze for getting vertical had taken hold of river play. The ender was soon expanded upon with the invention of the pirouette, a 360-degree spin – rotating around the bow like a corkscrew – during an ender. “Enders were freestyle,” according to freestyle champion Clay Wright, until the invention of the pirouette – so paddlers took to the pirouette just as eagerly as they had to the ender. 720-degree and even 1080-degree pirouettes came next,[19] followed by the ‘polish ender,’ a variation in which the paddler remained surfing the feature following the completion of an ender[20] – the first example of such a dynamic trick performed as stationary play. With the entrance into the vertical realm of kayaking behind them, paddlers were ready for kayak design to step up and cater to the new style of play.
DOMINANCE OF THE DANCER
Boat design in the 1980s would represent a few important mixed with years of , with the greatest innovations occurring towards the beginning and the very end of the decade. The 1980 release of a kayak model called Topolino by the British company Eskimo Kayaks helped pioneer perhaps the most consistent and dramatic trend throughout the evolution of freestyle kayaks: the shortening of boat length. The ‘Topo,’ as it was often called, was revolutionary not only because of its profoundly blunt, rounded features that set it apart from other boats of the time but also because it was designed with a length of 2.2 meters, an dramatic departure from the time period’s 4-meter standard.[21] Designed as a creekboat, the Topo was the first example of what would be called the “spud boat” design (due to its distant resemblance to a potato), yet it still could surf waves and holes.
The American boat company Perception also made a fairly dramatic shortening in length with its release of the Eclipse, a model which, although a dud of a design, also broke below the 4-meter mark, although less dramatically so than the Topo had done. Under the direction of designers Bill Masters and Allan Stancil, the Eclipse represented over a foot in length reduction from the kayaks already in Perception’s whitewater line-up, the Quest and the Mirage. Its focus on pure river-running as opposed to the traditional influences of slalom racing represented a larger change in Perception’s design strategy[22] that would soon help the company become a pioneer in playboating.
With the Quest and Mirage already established as popular boats, Perception Kayaks was poised to be a strong player in the whitewater kayak sales market during the 1980s. Few predicted, however, the impact that a single boat design would have not only on Perception but also on the kayak market as a whole. 1983 brought the release of the Perception Dancer, widely considered ‘the boat that changed it all.’
Aesthetically, the Dancer is to whitewater kayaking what the famous Spitfire is to fighter aviation. Its lines are sleek and smooth, its profile representative of all the classic design traits of its era; to this day it remains one of the most beautiful models ever produced. The Dancer is worthy of its fame and reverence, though, mostly as a result of its innovative design characteristics.
While still designed primarily as a river-runner, as all boats of the time were, the Dancer has often been viewed as the first playboat.[23] As the shortest of the four models that the Masters-Stancil design team had created for Perception, the Dancer was 11 and a half feet long[24] – a length that, while literally twice as long as leading playboats would be three decades later,[25] still represented gutsy progression at the time. The model, however, was not only innovative because of its length. Its design also incorporated a progressive amount of rocker – the degree of upward curvature in the hull of a boat[26] – more towards the middle of the boat and towards the very ends in comparison with Perception’s previous designs.[27] Additionally, it was relatively low in volume. Yet its length was still the feature that most notably set it apart from previous boats.[28]
Other paddlers had laughed at the short length of this river-runner when the first prototypes were released in fiberglass. The first time it was paddled, Stancil found it carved into eddies so effortlessly that even he believed there had been some mistake in the design. Reason for doubt was not unreasonable in light of Perception’s previous efforts with short-boat innovation, as the Eclipse had not proved anything about the long-term viability of a trend in shortening kayak length. The Dancer’s long success, however, strongly secured the shortening of whitewater boats as a lasting progression in playboat evolution and not a fluke of attempted innovation as some onlookers had believed to be the case. The Dancer became, in the words of one writer, “the future of the sport.”[29]
Once the Dancer caught on, there were no boats that competed on equal footing, and the design continued to dominate within the whitewater kayak industry for almost a decade. No other whitewater kayak before or since has been so successful for so long. Hydra produced the P-51 Mustang just a few months after the Dancer’s first release, and while its design allowed it to at least compete with the Dancer, both the company Hydra and the Mustang model never found the same success as did Perception and the Dancer.
Perception followed the Dancer with the 1984 release of a design called the Sabre, a radical, hard-edged playboat that was reminiscent of the era’s long squirt-boat designs. While not recognized as such at the time, the Sabre was in many respects an early squirtboat.[30] This represented a significant departure from the Dancer, and although the Dancer remained more popular, the sharper edges and squirtboat-reminiscent features of the Sabre would prove to be a leader in trends for playboat design of the future.
1984 also saw the release of the Jeti, a 9’10” spud boat designed by the small kayak company Noah.[31] Like the Topo, the Jeti helped pave the way for shorter boats despite being primarily a creeker and not the typical river-runner design of the era. After observing the design, Slim Ray, an author and contributor to Canoe Magazine, wrote that, “Short boats, of which the Jeti is currently the ultimate example, are here to stay.”[32] The Jeti managed to find a regional following in the area of its production, but Noah eventually went out of business due to other circumstances and the boat never found great success. It was also at this time that Prijon, a European company well known for its composite slalom kayaks, entered the American plastic kayak industry with the production of the T-Slalom. At 12’1” the T-Slalom achieved popularity among small regional pockets of the U.S. not unlike the Jeti.[33] Such designs did not capitalize on any radical innovation, though, and with Perception’s success in promoting its designs, the Dancer still managed to consistently outsell any would-be competitor.
THE ‘80s
Vertical play was further expanded in the early 1980s with the stern squirt, a move which involved the kayaker sinking the back of their boat underwater using the current at an eddy line and performing a momentary ‘stern stall,’ balancing vertically on the boat’s stern. The stern squirt joined the ender as a popular and soon-to-be classic playboating staple. As the name suggests, the move was pioneered not by kayakers paddling traditional river-running designs but by squirtboaters.
Squirtboats are radically different from any other type of kayak. Custom made out of fiberglass for the individual paddler, the boats have to maintain a buoyancy of 51% with the paddler inside, meaning that both boat and kayaker barely floated on the surface. This is accomplished by giving the kayaks incredibly low volume. The boats generally take on a somewhat normal width but have a flat deck both in front of and behind the cockpit. What this unique design allows for is an ease of movement unparalleled with any other type of boat, in which simply by leaning backwards the squirtboater can sink the whole stern of their kayak and raise the bow into the air, for example. Squirtboating has never reached nearly the same level of popularity as regular freestyle kayaking and to this day it retains only a small, nearly cult-like following. Yet as a result of this greater ease of movement, innovation in squirtboating would prove to often be a step ahead of regular playboaters in pioneering innovative maneuvers. As “the catalyst of freestyle,” according to Wright (the 2013 Mens World Squirt Champion), squirtboating helped spawn multiple characteristics of freestyle that went on to become major elements of the sport.[34]
By 1985, nearly a dozen rodeos had been established in the American West while a few had already sprung up on the East Coast as well. It was already evident even at this stage in the evolution of the rodeo that the rodeo’s popularity was increasing directly alongside the level of playboating that leading kayakers were performing. Continued progression, however, proved to move at a slower pace during the second half of the 1980s than it had in the first. Although boat length continued to drop, no new designs made anywhere near as large a splash in the rodeo scene as the Dancer had done.
The nine-foot, six-inch British-designed Rotobat of Pyranha Canoes was released in 1986; originally intended for kayak polo in pools, it found acceptance as a whitewater boat yet remained unremarkable aside from its short length. Still selling largely to a European river-running market, Prijon followed in 1987 with the introduction of its T-Canyon model (10’8”) into the United States, where it was met with slow sales. 1989’s Prijon Invader proved more successful than the T-Canyon but, like the boats before it, contributed very minimally to progression. During the same year, Wave Sport entered the scene as a very small, Colorado-based kayak company and imported an unremarkable design from Britain that developed only a niche market in its region.[35]
Perception’s previous dominance in the whitewater market had in part been responsible for the relative slowing of progression seen during the second half of the 1980s, as the company’s near-monopoly on boat sales hindered competition. The period, however, had seen no new radical designs from Hydra or Prijon, either. The boats of the period simply represented varied approaches to the same themes in design. Despite all the play being performed in them, the kayaks remained river-running designs at heart with very mild influences coming from squirtboating.[36]
Two notable designs, however, were in fact released just before the start of the ‘90s. While the Dancer still remained popular, Perception introduced the Corsica, a design pioneered by a young South African paddler named Corran Addison. The design had its roots in a prototype that Addison had personally introduced to Masters of Perception Kayaks at age 17, a design which Addison believed could improve on the Dancer. Masters, impressed, had hired Addison as part of the Perception team.[37] While not a game changer, the Corsica’s design was successful and established Addison as an upcoming designer in the whitewater industry, specifically in regards to rodeo.
The second design was the aptly named Response, introduced by a new company called Dagger Kayaks. Immediately upon its entry into the whitewater market, Dagger was able to compete with Perception better than any other company since Perception’s rise to industry dominance, having produced the first design to truly threaten the now-six-year-old Dancer. Dagger churned out Responses. The boat was popular due to its ease of handling, in part a result of more rounded edges. It also was distinct in that it featured a flat back deck. The introduction of this boat foreshadowed a heightening competition within the industry that would soon establish itself in the coming decade.
RODEO REVAMPED: THE EARLY ‘90s
While the coming decade proved fruitful in producing innovation, the 1990s would also mark a major transition in freestyle kayaking as a sport and an industry. As playboating began to pass from the Baby Boomers to Generation X – and later to Generation Y by the end of the decade – rodeo as it had existed in the 1980s was replaced by “new concepts” and “new attitudes.”[38] The industry matured in terms of growth in popularity and industry but grew younger in terms of its image, preferences, and emerging support base. Its appeal came to parallel that of skateboarding, snowboarding, and BMX, which were also growing at the time, and the tricks would take on a more acrobatic nature that better suited younger bodies and tastes. Additionally, rodeo soon became much more of a sport than in the past with the growth of a professional competition circuit and increasing regulation.
Another major difference brought about by this transformation was that rodeo would no longer be considered a less significant sub-sport of whitewater kayaking during the ‘90s as it had been during the ‘70s and ‘80s. It became a major component of whitewater kayaking and even the central focus of whitewater paddle-sports as a whole. This growth led to an increasing gap between freestyle and river-running. Even though playboats remained river-runners for some time, the growth of “park-and-play” (remaining at one feature for a whole paddling session instead of paddling to them as part of a run) decreased the popularity of river-running in comparison to rodeo.[39] This trend, while discouraging to some, would eventually lead to the playboat specialization necessary for continued freestyle evolution.
Most relevant to the physical evolution of the sport was the ‘90’s new breed of kayaks, one in which boat design was more “sensitive to profile and volume distribution.”[40] It was during this period that designers discovered how best to balance reasonable buoyancy with the ‘slicey’ properties of the squirt boat in accordance with the time period’s popular moves – achieved by increasing volume around the cockpit while significantly tapering it at the ends.
The year 1991 was a major one for innovation in design and growth of the rodeo scene. Dagger released a second boat that could compete with the Dancer, the Crossfire, which sported an increase in bow rocker, further length reduction, and sharper, more aggressive stern edges.[41] Both the Crossfire and 1989’s Dagger Response proved successful in competition. One such competition, the 1991 Ocoee Rodeo, held on Tennessee’s Ocoee River, set the record at the time for the largest rodeo ever held with over 100 competitors (including those from squirtboat and single canoe classes). Another 1991 rodeo, this one held in Wales[42] and called the “1991 World Stunt Boat Championships,” marked the world’s first international playboating competition featuring competitors from more than one country. Both events helped contribute to the emergence of a growing rodeo circuit.[43]
If 1991 had marked a big year for innovation, 1993 eclipsed it completely. The year marked the beginning of what Jackson sees as “the biggest years of [freestyle] evolution,” which he believes continued on until 2009.[44] Most notably, 1993 was the year in which the cartwheel, without a doubt the most-performed freestyle trick of all time, made its debut both in standard playboating and the competitive world stage. Like the squirt, the cartwheel had been developed prior to its emergence in regular freestyle by squirtboaters,[45] in particular by legendary squirtboater Jim Snyder.[46] Once brought to the regular rodeo scene in 1993, the move exploded in popularity, taking the ender’s place as the most popular move.
Like the ender, pirouette, and stern squirt, the cartwheel engaged the kayaker in the vertical axis of play. To visualize it, imagine a kayaker flat-spinning, which is done in the same manner as a ceiling fan – on a horizontal plane. Then rotate it sideways by 90 degrees so the plane on which the kayaker is spinning resembles that of the arms of a windmill. The ends of the kayak rotate around the kayaker’s ever-turning body. One 360 rotation, or “throwing” two “ends,” constitutes a single cartwheel. This maneuver would go on to quite literally define the most progressive stationary play of the time until the loop and the blunt could wrest the undivided attention of the whole of freestyle out of its grip. Kayakers would soon be attempting to link together as many cartwheels as possible without stopping. It wasn’t long before Jackson built on the cartwheel concept and invented the split wheel, a more technical maneuver also still very relevant in modern hole boating involving a change in the direction of a cartwheel mid-way through completion.[47]
1993 saw not only the introduction of the cartwheel to rodeo but also one of the greatest showdowns in the history of freestyle boat design, which pitted three industry heavyweights against each other. The arena was the 1993 World Whitewater Rodeo Championships, held on the legendary Ocoee River, and the spectators were over 100 other competitors representing 11 countries, all with an eye out for the hottest new boat designs.[48] The newly adopted cartwheels were the most valuable chips to be played.
Perception, Prijon, and Dagger were the competitors. Perception entered with the Pirouette Super Sport, designed with this particular competition in mind,[49] a boat with improved rodeo capabilities over previous models of Perception’s modestly successful Pirouette line and a particularly low volume stern.[50]
Based on the dominance of Dagger and Perception designs in the recent past, one might have expected Prijon to enter the competition with the least competitive technology. This, however, was not the case. The Prijon Hurricane, just released for the 1993 season, had already showed it could outperform previous boats[51] with a number of progressive design features and would be paddled in the competition by Addison, who had since left Perception. Most notably, the Hurricane featured an unusually flat hull, particularly in the rear half of the boat. While not yet fully incorporating the flat-hulled design that would soon characterize all playboats, the Hurricane’s high performance foreshadowed the true ‘planing hull’ breakthrough that would occur only a few years later.
Like the Pirouette Super Sport, the Hurricane had a low-volume stern, but it differentiated itself with a noticeably asymmetric profile; its widest point was not at the center of the boat but behind it. The kayak’s stern, while thin deck to hull, was quite wide. These characteristics would be embraced by a growing number of boat designs later in the decade. In the words of Spelius of Dagger, the kayak represented a “new operating system” in boat design.[52]
When Spelius recognized the superiority of Prijon’s Hurricane over Dagger’s 1991 Crossfire, he and the Dagger team produced the Transition, a last-minute creation before Worlds. More nimble than its Dagger forbearers, the Transition incorporated some features of the old Crossfire but more closely followed the lead of the Hurricane’s advances. It, too, had a flat stern deck and an asymmetric profile.[53]
After fierce competition, the results were tallied, and it was revealed that the top two finishers were Jackson and Spelius, both paddling the Transition.[54] The Super Sport and Hurricane missed out on the podium entirely. However, despite all three boats representing the best efforts of the leading designers of the era’s top companies, less evolution in design was represented in the kayaks than might be assumed. Similarly, while the Hurricane clearly represented some progression, nobody quite grasped the significance of the Hurricane’s hull design.
While obviously designed with play in mind, the three boats were still river-runners in comparison to future standards, with no drastic differences to mark them as playboats. All were in the 10-foot range, no different from the more dedicated river-runners of the time.[55] The 1994 release of a slightly modified Transition, which brought the Transition model to the regular market for the first time, saw the boat classified as an all-rounder, even though it had been designed with some of the most progressive rodeo-inspired characteristics of the time.[56] An innovative concept would soon be introduced, however, that would leave a permanent mark on boat design and begin a revolution in freestyle, particularly in wave play.
DISPLACEMENT DISPLACED: THE INTRODUCTION OF THE PLANING HULL
With the mid-‘90s began another quickening of the pace of boat design evolution. A mark of this time period was the introduction of a number of new kayaks in the nine-foot range, which represented a whole foot of length reduction from the major new models at the 1993 World Championships. Similarities in stern profiles also revealed increased influence from squirt boats, an early sign that the peak of the ‘Slicey Boat Era’ was not too far away. It would be during this same decade that volume in the ends of the kayak would be further reduced by dramatic proportions so that boats could better slice into the water for cartwheels. Sweeping innovations concerning the hull, however, would come first.
In 1994 the Canadian company Necky Kayaks, which had until then been mostly involved in the ocean and tour-kayaking markets,[57] introduced to the rodeo community a new whitewater model they had been working on called the Rip. Made from fiberglass, which was still not uncommon for prototypes, this model was the first whitewater kayak to feature a planing hull.[58] In 1993 Necky had produced the Rip International, an ocean-surfing kayak that, like most surf kayaks since the 1970s, had a planing hull resembling a surfboard.[59] It was during the following year that British slalom racer and ocean kayak surfer Spike Gladwin, along with Mike Neckar, a fellow kayak surfer and the owner of Necky, first brought this concept to a river. The inspiration for this had come when Gladwin tried out the Rip International design in whitewater, finding that it performed well in rapids and also that, unsurprisingly, it was an excellent surfer. Despite this, the 1994 Rip prototype was otherwise more heavily influenced by river-running than by the objective of surfing.[60]
Up until this point, all whitewater kayaks had utilized the more traditional ‘displacement hull’ concept, which for whitewater boats in particular means a U-shaped hull. With the flat planing hull, on the other hand, a smooth surface devoid of lateral curvature covers the majority of the bottom of the kayak. Such a hull acts like a displacement hull and plows through the water when paddled normally, but when kept flat against fast-moving oncoming water, hydrodynamic lift causes the hull to skim along the water in the same way that a water ski keeps a skier on the water’s surface. The planing hull meant that a better surf could be achieved in a hole, but its real advantage was with wave play.
A displacement hull could in fact plane to an extent on waves but this was instantly broken as soon as the kayak started to turn. During a spin in a displacement-hulled boat, the shape of the hull that is being presented to oncoming water will change in relation to the current, ending whatever planing action was occurring. Additionally, a U-shaped hull turned sideways is significantly less hydrodynamic, meaning it presents a shape against which oncoming water can better push and generate drag. Without the recirculative properties of a hole keeping the boat in place, a kayaker would quickly be pushed over, or ‘flushed’ from, a wave. Contrarily, with an actively planing flat hull, the shape of the part of the hull presented to oncoming current changes much less during a spin. Furthermore, a planing hull turned sideways is in theory no less hydrodynamic than when in a front-surf, although getting the boat to plane perfectly when sideways is more technically challenging on the part of the paddler. In this way, the planing hull allows a kayaker to rotate around a central point, which is crucial for flat-spins.[61] (While a U-shaped hull’s superiority for tackling rock slides and drops makes it most commonly preferred for creeking,[62] a flat hull also poses no problems for river-running. In fact, the planing hull would eventually come to be preferred by many for river-running).
Gladwin and Neckar brought their Rip design in prototype to the 1994 Ottawa River Rodeo, where they let other kayakers try it out on a popular wave. The boat was a hit, although Necky was slow to realize the significance of this hull and capitalize upon their innovation. It was other designers, particularly Addison, who would popularize the planing hull in rodeo. “When the other designers saw that you could paddle that boxy, bizarre thing they knew they could make something much more friendly that still spun well,” says Wright of the Rip. “Corran [Addison] got his design out first and doesn't argue when credit is given to him, but it's Necky who got it all started and spread the word.”[63]
Addison, who had left Perception three years earlier to focus on slalom, had co-founded a company called Savage Designs in North Carolina not long before and, later in 1994, released the Scorpion, the first planing-hulled kayak to come out in plastic. Addison understood the significance of the planing hull in river play and the Scorpion met the new hull design with other progressive, rodeo-oriented characteristics.
1995 brought Necky’s entrance into the plastic playboat market with a modified production model of the Rip, which shortened the length of the original design from 9’2” to 8’10”. Addison, however, quickly became the focus of attention again as Savage shot back with the Fury in 1996. While a failure at Necky to fully realize the potential of the planing hull meant the company would not get the first stab at its market,[64] Addison’s reputation as a radical visionary made him the perfect designer to pick up where Necky had left off. Regarded as something of an oddball, the Fury incorporated small round divots in the hull in an attempt to further improve surfing capabilities.
In comparison to the Rip, the boat was designed with a greater focus on rodeo. The hull divot idea proved to be a dead end, but the otherwise extremely flat hull, comparatively short length of 8’6”, low volume, and aggressively sharp chines (the line at which the hull meets the boat’s sides) made the boat a key leader in playboat evolution and a model of which many other boat designers would soon emulate.[65] Addison, with his progressive image, fresh perspective, and insightful intuitions about the future of rodeo, was able to promote it well. Himself a Gen-Xer, he embodied the trends that the planing hulled-rodeo boat would soon bring to freestyle and was “not bound by aging [baby] boomer concepts and thinking.”[66] The Fury would prove to be ahead of its time but also serve as a final farewell to concepts of old.
If the Fury was the year’s most progressive boat, Dagger’s RPM (“Radical Play Machine”) was the most well liked.[67] Despite it’s name, the kayak was neither as radical nor as good at play at its designers had imagined; it was devoid of a planing hull, lacked defined chines, and, at just under 9 feet, it was not radically short. Even so, in a display of lingering conservatism in the market, the Fury was looked at by many as too strange while the tamer RPM became embraced. Dagger’s success with a model that was almost already outdated within a year of its production showed that, while the displacement hull may have been on its way out in rodeo, the planing hull had not yet been fully accepted as the hallmark progression that it was.
Shortcomings in rodeo success did not overshadow the RPM’s role as an “everyman’s boat” that still built upon the major advances in boat design before the planing hull.[68] It found its place as an excellent introductory boat that would go on to great success in river-running and remain in production for years. The RPM eventually became the best-selling whitewater kayak of all time and would be re-introduced by Dagger as a limited edition model (with slight modifications and an upgraded interior) in 2013 – a testament to its spot as one of whitewater kayaking’s most beloved boats.[69]
1997: RODEO DESIGN FINDS DIRECTION
While the planing hull continued to make its way into the rodeo scene during this era, the year 1997 marked a surge in production that would continue into the 2000s. During this year, previous schools of thought on how to advance rodeo remained well-entrenched, as for some time, the industry struggled to embrace this new technology. After all, no past knowledge existed on these hulls in their application to rodeo. It would take a series of boats that failed to progress, complimented by a number of designs that truly did lead the way, to guide the industry in the right direction. The year 1997 would serve as a bridge between the raw innovation of the mid-90s and the refined success that characterized rodeo models just before dawn of the new millennium. Designers would rely heavily on intuition and trial-and-error methods for achieving innovation, as the sport of rodeo was too much of an oddball to make serious engineering applicable; accordingly, promotion based on “mumbo-jumbo science and physics” flourished.[70]
Prijon followed the RPM with the 1997 release of the Fly, which was in many ways characteristic of Dagger’s most recent design.[71] It built on some of the successes of the older Hurricane but was shorter at 8’10”, more on par with the current standard in rodeo boat length, which most often fell between eight and a half to nine feet. The boat, which just a few years earlier would have represented incredible advancements, now represented only a partial commitment to the most current, progressive ideas. It had a semi-planing hull that, while flatter than the RPM’s, still failed to capitalize on the abilities of the fully planing models. It was also not as good at cartwheels as the rodeo market would come to demand[72] and would prove to be in the last line of kayaks not to fully embrace this ever-more-popular trick.
It was at about this time that Pyranha, realizing the promise behind the still-growing rodeo market in the United States, began importing kayaks from Britain to try and carve out a piece of the emerging scene for themselves. They started selling two designs, the Acrobat and the Stunt, each of which experimented with previously untapped hull design ideas. The Acrobat’s hull featured two concave areas, one on either side of the cockpit’s underbelly, while the Stunt’s hull was marked by multiple areas of increased convexity over the normal shape of the hull. Far from possessing planing capabilities, the designs were received for about a season but, in retrospect, proved that such experimentation in the opposite direction of the planing hull was an evolutionary dead end.[73]
Wave Sport worked hard to produce a number of designs around this time in their attempt to increase their foothold in the rodeo-oriented market. Notable was the 7’5” Stubby, which followed an unimpressive performance by the company’s 1995 model, the Frankenstein. Realizing that the Frankenstein design, intended for the performance of the more old school moves,[74] had been made irrelevant by the increased popularity of the cartwheel, the 1997 release of the Stubby was an opportunity to better embrace rodeo in its most recent representation. The Stubby, however, was strongly influenced by creeking designs, and although it was significantly shorter than its peers and incorporated a semi-planing hull, the higher-volume ends typical of creekers kept it from being good at cartwheeling.[75] Once again, a failure to best perform cartwheels also meant a failure at rodeo – at this point the greatest focus of the whitewater market.
Wave Sport better succeeded in this vein with the release of the 8’9” Kinetic in the same year. It was with this boat that the company made its first true entry into the main rodeo scene[76] along with its larger version, the Godzilla. The kayak was designed in part by Jackson and Chan Zawing, Wave Sport’s founder, who was one of the few baby boomers to truly grasp the forces of change that would come with the planing hull. The Kinetic design performed old school moves well[77] but incorporated modern characteristics in the hull and ends.
Addison made his mark in 1997 with the Hammer, a design that once again marked a step forwards in rodeo design.[78] At 9 feet it was not particularly short, but its thoughtful volume distribution and advanced hull made it successful at all things rodeo. Surprisingly, though, boats at the time still had not become completely rodeo specific; while play characteristics dominated many boats, even a model as in tune with the current rodeo trends as the Hammer was billed as a river runner. “As river running boats go,” reads one promotional statement, “the Hammer is the most fun ever.”[79] The model was the first to be released by Addison under a new name, Riot Kayaks, which he had founded following a recent departure from Savage.
The Necky Jive and the Perception Whip-it were two of the most popular new boats to hit the market during the year.[80] Both featured planing hulls and, like the Hammer, excelled at rodeo, especially with cartwheels. The Jive in particular utilized aggressive rails to its advantage.[81] The Whip-it excelled on waves and finally marked Perception’s entry into the planing-hulled market.[82]
Also joining the Whip-it in this respect was the Vertigo, Dagger’s follow-up to the RPM. Utilizing well-defined chines, a flat, fast-spinning hull, and a remarkably low length of 7’10.5”, it was greatly responsible for the Dagger team’s success in 1997’s rodeo circuit and proved the company was on par with the latest in play-focused design.[83] Contrasting the recent designs from Pyranha, Wave Sport, and Prijon, the Hammer, Jive, Whip-it, and Vertigo represented the style of design that would steer future rodeo design toward trends to follow.
THE ‘SLICEY’ ERA
With the technological advances of the late ‘90s also came more shifts in the character of the rodeo scene. A new vibe emerging from Generation X’s heightened involvement in whitewater kayaking had existed throughout the ‘90s, yet as the level of skill in river play further progressed toward the end of the decade, so too did the craze that surrounded the rodeo. As Generation Y began to enter the competitive circuit in the decade’s final years, the dawn of a new audience for freestyle became even more apparent.
The growth in numbers of ‘professional kayakers’ who “made a lifestyle, if not a living, of the rodeo” (KTH) and spent over 300 days a year on a river understandably raised the bar in freestyle. While the heightening distinction between ‘pro boater’ and ‘amateur’ led to an increasing disparity in the abilities of the two classes, an increase in the amount of instruction available (both in terms of published how-to guides and kayak ‘schools’) made the sport more accessible, further bolstering its popularity. Additionally, the younger kayaking generation was responsible for introducing a more social orientation to the practice of freestyle, which appealed to the X-games-crazed generations more than it had to the baby boomers (4). By this time, rodeo fully dominated amongst all things whitewater in the United States and Canada and had grown to reach comparable levels of popularity in Europe.
The demographic shift that increased throughout the ‘90s brought with it drastic changes to the nature of freestyle. Fully utilizing the benefits of the planing hull, this new breed of rodeo athlete popularized a more gymnastic, dynamic style of play, bringing concepts of movement from other popular extreme sports like snowboarding to the waves. This peaked around the end of the ‘90s, and it was at that point that the divergence began to occur between river-runners and playboats, as the more radical styles could no longer be supported by the river-runner.[84] Designs that were best tuned to the emerging changes in rodeo had too little volume in the ends, were too short, and had chines that were too aggressive to be incorporated into a successful river-running design.
The king amongst all tricks was still the cartwheel. The ‘slicey era’ peaked around this time, as boats that could best cut through the water when turned on edge had consistently been rewarded. Some hole competitions simply became a way of counting how many “ends” could be thrown in a set amount of time, with the best cartwheelers essentially spending entire 45-second rides performing the same motion consecutively. At the same time, the planing hull began to have its most profound effect on rodeo yet. The younger generation’s new schools of thought on how to play most profoundly affected wave freestyle, and the displacement hull would be finally left in the dust.
The advent of a move called the blunt marked perhaps the era’s greatest critical juncture, after which wave freestyle would finally reach the same popularity and level of technicality that existed in hole play. The exact origins of the move have never been fully resolved, as both Jackson and Addison claim its invention as their own while others such as Wright believe it was pioneered by surf kayakers before either of the two first performed it.[85] Regardless, the trick’s impact on freestyle was immense. The premise of the trick is a 180-degree turn in which the stern is lifted up while the boat pivots around the bow, exposing the majority of the hull to the air before it falls back onto the wave (with the paddler then facing backwards).
The movement became necessary to learn for all competitive rodeo athletes when it was revealed that 1999’s World Championships were to be held on a wave. Kayakers most confident with cartwheels in holes scrambled to perfect it. This also represented the final straw for the demise of the displacement hull.[86] It was at this World Championship Rodeo that Jackson performed the first “air blunt” in competition, in which the kayak is completely airborne (accomplished through using the planing hull to skip off the water’s surface as the turn motion is initiated). While the blunt had of course led to the invention of the air blunt, it was the latter that may have had the most impact on the evolution of freestyle. The completely new style of trick “opened the door to modern wave surfing and boat design,” according to Wright, who sees the ability to get off the water from the face of a wave as a “boat design and athlete miracle.”[87]
In 1998 Wave Sport released the X, a design featuring progressively low volume that not only made it a favorite in competition but also made cartwheels more accessible to the average kayaker. An “anti-trip chine” was also introduced, which through innovative positioning of the chine on the kayak provided the carving and controlling benefits of an aggressive chine without as high a risk of ‘catching an edge’ while spinning.[88] The boat capitalized on the successes of its 1997 precursors by further capitalizing on their other design features.[89]
The Wave Sport X was met with the release of Perception’s 3D. This boat was particularly reminiscent of existing squirboat designs, most notably a ‘scooped’ deck at the bow and stern of the kayak. In the same year, Savage released what would be its last industry-leading design, the Beast. At only 8 feet long, the boat represented Savage’s only moderate success without Addison and incorporated the same rodeo-winning “no-trip edges” that would come to be a common design feature in the following years.[90]
1999 brought the Mr. Clean and the Jib from Perception, the Alien from Prijon, the Zwo from Eskimo, and the XXX from Wave Sport, a class of boats which had fairly similar characteristics but experienced success to a variety of degrees. No radical new concepts were pioneered by these designs but instead the existing trends set in motion by the successful boats of 1997 and 1998 were further explored and often represented more dramatically, especially in terms of further volume reduction in the ends and, once again, in additional reductions in boat length.[91] Designers wanted smooth, streamlined hulls for ‘loose’ movement on waves and sliceyness in the bow and stern that would allow for cartwheel after cartwheel. To balance out the loss of bow and stern volume, designers packed more volume around the cockpit.[92]
The era’s most progressive boat, however, once again came from Corran Addison. 1998 brought Riot’s release of the Glide, often known as ‘the boat that changed the rules.’ Like the others of its generation, the Glide never offered anything truly unprecedented but built upon the successes of its predecessors. Addison’s design simply did what other boats had started to do more successfully, excelling in every aspect that a current playboat demanded. Famously, athletes at that year’s world championships lobbied for a last-minute change in how moves were scored because the boat gave the kayakers paddling it such a huge advantage that they felt the competition simply was not fair. The model was also well known at the time for being the boat in which thirty-three completely vertical ends (15 and a half cartwheels) were achieved in only twenty four seconds.[93] Even so, Riot’s greatest innovation was yet to come.
THE EARLY 2000s
With the new Millennium came a new revolution in boat design, led once again by Addison. Riot released the Disco, truly a boat ahead of its time. Both its length and volume distribution were characteristic of a design style that wouldn’t emerge in full force for years to come and diverged dramatically from the otherwise universal obsession with sliciness that continued through the early 2000s. To say it foreshadowed the decline of the slicey boat era by over a year would be an understatement – rather, it was a major force in paving the way for the eventual decline of this period. The design incorporated a degree of length-shortening that was unmatched anywhere else in the history of freestyle kayaking; the standard model measured in at a mere 6’11”, a length only a foot or so longer than kayaks would still be in over a decade.[94] Most significantly, volume was distributed more evenly throughout its short length, without any resemblance to the longer, low-volume ends that every other playboat sported at the time.
By jump-starting the ‘short boat’ wave, the Disco also directly led to the creation of many of the hole and wave moves still popular today. Steve Fisher notably used the boat to invent the airscrew, the pan-am, and the helix[95] (an aerial barrel roll, a blunt with the boat achieving greater-than-90-degree angle to the water, and an aerial 180-degree spin performed inverted, respectively). The trend the Disco set also greatly benefitted a type of hole move called a loop – essentially a frontflip – that had been invented by Wright over a decade earlier. The move had never caught on; Wright had been able to perform it in a Dancer but it became harder with the decrease in volume that eventually followed.[96] With dramatic shortening of boat length that followed the Disco, the loop and other tricks based off of the same principle became not only possible but also accessible. Moves such as the space godzilla (a tilted loop) and the McNasty (a frontflip initiated by a 180-degree spin) were pioneered during this time.[97]
Other boats released in 2000 and 2001, however, showed that the Disco would not end the slicey boat era immediately. The rapid pace of kayak production did not slow, either. In 2000, Dagger put out the Centrifuge and Ultrafuge, Perception the Ultraclean, Riot the Trickster, Pyranha the Prozone, Pijon the Luv and Machine, and Wave Sport the ForePlay.[98] As a result of these designs, the first years of the new millennium represented an important phase of freestyle’s progression. Beyond pioneering innovation, kayak design was also still making the technical tricks of the ‘90s more accessible than ever before.[99]
Interestingly, part of this expansion of accessibility came not from improved boat design but from improved boat sizing. In 2000, Pyranha produced the InaZone, not an especially remarkable boat in terms of design but notably the first playboat model to be released simultaneously in three different sizes.[100] Most companies had by then seen the advantage of creating two different sizes for each model or gradually expanding their size selections, but the InaZone was the first to meet a standard which would grow to become the norm and continue on to stand as such today. Manufacturers had finally grown to understand the close correlation between the performance of the planing hull and the kayaker’s weight (in relation to the boat’s volume).[101]
Better meeting the demands of a greater diversity of paddler sizes worked as a positive feedback loop of sorts for the paddling industry during this time. An increasing demand for kayaks had meant companies could afford to produce multiple sizes in an effort to reach more paddlers, which in turn made kayaking more accessible to greater numbers of people, further increasing playboating’s appeal and serving as the impetus for the addition of a third size to a company’s production line.
2000 also brought the Riot Trickster, followed by the Riot Dominatrix in 2001. Both boats took a step back from the Disco; both were longer – the Trickster by a whole foot – and resembled the other popular boats of their time more closely than the Disco had. Still, they incorporated progressive design characteristics, especially in regard to volume distribution, that helped them achieve similar success in performing the hottest new tricks. The volume distribution around the cockpit in particular looked remarkably similar to that of kayaks a decade later.
The other most significant design of 2001 was Wave Sport’s EZ, designed in part by Jackson. It capitalized on the successes of the XXX by making a similar design more user-friendly.[102] As with the Disco, its relatively short length of 6’9” made moves such as loops “instantly available to more people.”[103] It was also an excellent cartwheeler, still featuring slicey ends for such a short package. Jackson’s success with the design was proven when he won the 2001 World Championships in the very boat he helped to create.
By 2002, the slicey boat era has clearly started to wind down, as top models of the year showed less influence from the unrelenting focus on cartwheels that was present in previous years – evidence of a transition in hole-play priorities. Riot put out the Tekno, a design that yet again led the way in a successful distribution of volume. Extra gallons were cleanly packed around the cockpit. Yet the boat had a deeply forked bow and stern that would ultimately fall out of fashion – the forked bow particularly quickly. Wave Sport released the Ace, also during 2002, which followed in the footsteps of the EZ but failed to improve significantly on its predecessor.[104]
Perception would find itself at the end of its years in the whitewater industry when, in an unprecedented move in 2002, a corporation called the Confluence Holding Company bought both Dagger and Perception, deciding to keep Dagger in the whitewater market while shifting Perception into the touring kayak industry.[105] Perception’s final playboat model was the Full Tilt, which, while in the same class as the EZ, proved to be somewhat underwhelming.[106] Filling the vacancy, however, was a new American company called Liquidlogic Kayaks, which had its first success in the playboat market with the introduction of its Space Cadet model in 2002. The design, high in volume, popularized a swollen mid-section, which quickly made getting a larger amount of air a “requirement for loops.”[107] The company’s 2003 release of the Pocket Rocket, a similar design, further proved the success of these characteristics.
The 2003 release of the Wave Sport Transformer marked the introduction of a new feature: removable tips that attached to the stern and bow of the kayak. The feature was based on the premise that longer, low volume boats achieved greater stability with vertical tricks while shorter ones made aerial tricks easier.[108] Striking a balance between cartwheel-friendly characteristics and an aerial trick-friendly design was a fine line that has been walked by the playboat industry ever since the first ‘new-school’ aerial tricks; Wave Sport’s attempt to mitigate this was both bold and creative. The Transformer itself, though, was designed too wide to be a very successful design, and, as the lack of any later model with removable tips would show, the Transformer’s most characteristic trait also contributed to little success.
2003 also saw the success of another emerging newcomer to the freestyle scene, the New Zealand-based company Bliss-stick. The company struck a successful design with the progressive and popular RAD (Radical Aerial Device) model, which was, of all of the year’s models, perhaps the kayak most resembling the next generation of successful playboats. At only 6’2” long yet built with over 50 gallons of volume – 13 more gallons than in Wave Sport’s most recent model – the designers at Bliss-Stick had built upon the successes of the Space Cadet and found a particularly successful combination of sliciness and ‘pop’ (mainly a function of buoyancy). This buoyancy, itself a function of volume, was what the loop (and later its family of tricks) had so desperately needed during the slicey era’s low-volume designs. The higher the volume, the higher the boat will be rejected out of the water following the bow’s insertion into a hole. Likewise, the RAD led the way in hole play and certainly lived true to its name. It also featured a wide, low stern, which proved to be a major design breakthrough for wave surfing.[109] All hulls would soon get thicker chine to chine at the kayaks’ ends, especially at their tails, and Bliss Stick – although not terribly successful during the coming decade – proved to be a quiet pioneer.
A SLOWING PACE: THE MID-TO-LATE 2000s
In 2003, Jackson left Wave Sport to found his own company, Jackson Kayaks, which picked up where many of the brands that were fading had left off with innovation and progression.[110] One of the founding ideas of Jackson’s new company was to address the absence of children’s-sized kayaks, which was achieved in 2004 with the release of Jackson’s first boat, the Fun 1. Most notably, this boat quite literally cut in half the age at which young kayakers could begin to competently practice freestyle. The Jackson brand would continue to distinguish itself by selling itself to the family market. Jackson also distinguished itself by creating designs that made the big tricks pioneered around the turn of the century further accessible to amateur paddlers. In the words of Wright, who would himself join the Jackson team, Jackson “made boats that anyone could do Corran’s tricks in.”[111] The line of Jackson kayaks that followed would make the company the industry’s most successful both in terms of popularity and the number of Jackson-sponsored athletes on the podium.
The majority of the 2000s, however, would prove to be one of the less eventful periods in freestyle’s history. While consistent innovation by Jackson, Wave Sport, and Dagger would match a solid increase in the skill level of the world’s top paddlers, few new concepts were pioneered in design. During and beyond these years, companies like Jackson would sometimes update a model annually or every few years, introducing new changes but not creating a brand new model each year. Large numbers of new models still came out, with contributions from Pyranha, Liquidlogic, Bliss Stick, Riot and Fluid (a newcomer) complimenting those of the leading three brands, but the industry pulled back from the frenzied pace of the previous decade.
Only the emergence of ‘combo moves’ towards the end of the decade were, arguably, indicative of true innovation in the era’s paddling itself and not just kayakers getting better at what they already knew with more refined boats. The improvements in existing technique and boat design concepts, however, did not lack impressive results. The loop had already overtaken the hole-boating scene, but paddlers reached new heights in their quest for huge air during these years and practiced increasingly difficult moves like the phonix monkey (a loop initiated through a full pirouette) and the back loop (a back flip).
These moves were in fact just the re-arrangement of previous ideas, not new concepts of motion, but they have remained not only incredibly technical and demanding of the kayaker but also arguably the most spectacular moves of freestyle’s history. Advances in freestyle technique on waves were just as noticeable. The airscrew began to reach its peak during these years and would come to represent the pinnacle of wave maneuvers. Fisher’s other creations of the early 2000s, notably the pan-am and helix, were also staples, along with the even older air blunt. Clean spins disappeared as a serious objective, but even the best big wave riders to this day clearly still enjoy the fun of spinning a loose hull on big waves.[112] The decade also saw an increasing ability amongst both boats and kayakers to take tricks that were once harder to perform and bring them to any river, not only ones with the largest and best features. “It’s cool to throw airscrews on a two-foot wave and do huge loops in a six-inch high hole because we can,” Wright comments.[113]
2005 notably marked the launch of the Jackson All Star, a boat later recognized as the most winning freestyle kayak in history[114] and one of the few kayaks in the era that significantly changed the way that kayaks looked. It took the newer concepts from the most progressive boats of the early 2000s and refined them, beefing up the volume and creating a sleeker, more rounded profile while hardly altering the length. Following the 2005 All Star, boats would only continue to shorten slightly. The boat also incorporated a short, squared off stern that would eventually be present on all freestyle models later in the decade.
Sales in the freestyle kayak market peaked in 2006, to be followed by a decline in both boat sales and the amount of money entering the industry through athlete sponsorships. Freestyle, no longer referred to as rodeo, had lost much of the zealous drive provided by the cartwheel generation of the mid-to-late ‘90s, and with that professional kayakers of all disciplines found increasing difficulty making money from sponsorships. By the mid-2000s, elite paddlers who could have made a living off the rodeo circuit years ago now turned to such pursuits as film-making and instructing to make a living out of kayaking, which certainly has had its advantages within the whitewater community. Still, this paralleled a decrease in numbers of whitewater kayakers overall.
“I've seen it all from the beginning,” says veteran playboater Ryan Whetung. “It started as a small group, grew huge with a lot of opportunity. And now it has scaled back again.”[115] Whitewater kayaking as a whole, not just freestyle, began to take on a state of increased obscurity in the mainstream eye. This decline in whitewater kayaking’s popularity as a whole was actually in large part the result of the freestyle scene losing the appeal it had achieved a decade earlier.
THE MODERN ERA OF FREESTYLE
While the most recent phase of freestyle’s evolution is barely four years long, the hallmark of this most recent chapter is easily distinguishable: the combo move. During the 2000s, kayakers had begun experimenting with linking moves together in both hole and wave play, an idea that would truly take off in freestyle’s most recent half-decade and become a necessity for competition in the most recent few years. The obsession with highly technical combos would arguably lead to a more precision-driven representation of freestyle than in any years past.[116]
A combo move on either a hole or a wave necessitates at the very least initiating a second trick immediately after completion of the first. On a wave, this sometimes means releasing off of the wave for the second trick using the bounce created by landing the first trick. A similar concept often applies in hole play – with a space godzilla to cartwheel combo, for example, the paddler must initiate the cartwheel with the downward movement created by landing the loop.
One could argue that, once again, freestyle is simply seeing progression based on what has been done before – and in some respects this is true. The combo, however, represents such a heightened demand for specific technique that it is fully deserving of its progressive status. (The first combo move, professional kayaker Patrick Camblin’s ‘bread-n-butter’ – a pan-am to back blunt or back pan-am – was quite a novel concept at the time.)
If boat evolution had become less radical in its innovation during these years, its progression had instead come also from further detailed refinement in existing designs. The 2010 model of the Jackson All Star was notable for slightly sinking the stern, making the short design go faster. Jackson also pioneered using continuous rocker on playboats,[117] with the previously all-popular concept of ‘kick rocker’ (created by the ends of the hull angling up drastically at only one point at each end)[118] being replaced by a more graceful and constant curvature that once only existed on river runners and creekers.
A final innovation seen in boat design that became apparent was one that had not been seen since playboating’s earliest years: a change in kayak material. While the idea had surfaced earlier in the 2000s and would not be embraced by the vast majority of the market, a switch among many elite paddlers back to composite kayaks grew significantly during freestyle’s most recent years. Fragile as always, the composite build can be utilized in situations where contact with rocks is not an issue. Still, it remains practical for only the most expert kayakers due to this specific demand as well as its high cost.
The composite material of choice, carbon fiber, created a kayak that was not only significantly lighter than plastic ones but also much more rigid. Even plastic boats with the best internal support fail to maintain their shape completely when bouncing off the face of a wave, with the boat absorbing some of the energy that would be used to launch a kayaker into the air. With carbon fiber came the ability to utilize completely the dynamic forces of a surging wave, allowing for bigger air, easier combos, and more dramatic tricks – all hallmarks of freestyle’s most recent years regardless of boat material.
CONCLUSION
It would be easy to dismiss the evolution of freestyle kayaking as the same sort of progression that occurs in all freestyle sports. Be it freestyle skiing, skateboarding, or BMX, freestyle sports generally have origins in simple transportation that, once transformed into a method of play, expand from a set of basic maneuvers to ever-more-complicated tricks. What makes freestyle kayaking’s evolution unique, though, is the amount that the freestyle kayak has changed in such a great diversity of aspects. Few other sports have had changes to their equipment so completely revolutionize the way they are practiced.
Such change, as the study of the sport’s progression shows, was a result of both innovative paddling and innovate boat design. More specifically, the expansion of the planes of motion on which play occurred proved to be the most significant trend – first horizontally with spins, then vertically with enders and squirts, then combining the two with the pirouette, then vertically on a rotated plane with the cartwheel, and so on until freestyle kayaking encompassed maneuvers utilizing virtually all possible directions of motion and axes of movement, with the performance of the maneuvers also very frequently going aerial. Equally important was the shortening of the kayak and the continuous redistribution of volume within a general kayak shape. These changes in playboat design took kayaks from being long with high-volume ends to medium-length with as little volume in the ends as possible to short with carefully proportioned bows and sterns combining the two approaches.
Knowledge of these trends in boat design and the nature of play is critical to understanding freestyle kayaking’s history and also helpful in more holistically understanding playboating today. What does it reveal, though, about freestyle kayaking’s future? An expansion of the directions in which kayakers are expected to move to be competitive in freestyle correlates to heightened physical demands of the sport on athletes. From this, it is no stretch to conclude that, now more than ever, paddlers with the greatest athleticism have a leg up even before pure technique is put to test. While even the most elite professional competition is by no means dominated only by young, exceptionally fit paddlers, an aerial space godzilla or a pistol flip (a McNasty on a wave), for example, demand much more agility than an ender or even a cartwheel.
The carbon kayak is another factor that will no doubt continue to influence freestyle kayaking in the future. Paddlers will continue to reach greater heights in aerial competition, perform difficult maneuvers with greater ease, and string together increasingly long combos, all mostly through the increasing level of skill of amongst kayakers. The superiority of carbon kayaks, however, most significantly in big wave freestyle, has certainly contributed to this recent progression and is poised to exert an even greater influence as their use starts to expand into the mainstream market. Freestyle kayaking also awaits potential advances in composite construction, quite possibly veering away from the use of carbon fiber, that make the composite boats cheaper and more durable – a potential for innovation that, if realized, could further magnify the effect of the composite playboat.
Kayak length and volume distribution continue to be highly-analyzed elements of freestyle progression but a clear reduction in the amount they change year to year is seen when observing trends in playboating’s previous 10 years. While the decrease of kayak length will ultimately be stopped by the length of the kayaker, length change has already plateaued in freestyle’s most recent years with boats now generally falling within a certain range (most often between 5’8” and 5’10”).
Volume distribution proves to be much more unique to each boat and is in theory always refinable. Once again, similarities in recent trends do show that boat designs currently do not differ as greatly year-to-year as they did in the past in regards to this characteristic. Still, play will continue to evolve and volume distribution will likely be the first characteristic to change. It is quite possible, too, that boats will come to be designed with a particular kind of river feature in mind, with volume design more specifically tailored to either hole or wave performance. Additionally, the increase in use of carbon boats means that more paddlers are having custom models made, meaning that a great diversity of kayak body designs with varying distributions of volume are being introduced, even if the same general tendencies are present.
While it is easy to presume that freestyle evolution will soon grind to a halt, one must remember that similar assumptions could have been made before previous advances in play or boat design and that there have been many periods in freestyle’s evolution that were equally devoid of radical change. A look at freestyle kayaking’s history will show that it is very hard to predict advances in playboating, with new moves necessitating alterations to boat design often popping up in an unprecedented manner. Even if progression in design has slowed considerably, leading boat designs still differ enough to demonstrate that not all designers agree completely on the right characteristics for a playboat, which signifies that opportunity to further innovate and improve remains. Models even within the last five years have progressed remarkably in the fine-tuned perspective of elite paddlers. “Every year I don't think kayaks will get better,” says Whetung. “Then they do.”
What is on many paddlers’ minds when looking into the future, however, is not necessarily the next big trick. Few paddlers disagree that the future of whitewater kayaking in general relies not on going bigger or throwing more technical combos but simply on increasing popularity and mainstream recognition of the sport, particularly with a younger audience. The heightened level of paddling achieved by professional kayakers may, in fact, be partially responsible for creating the recent decrease in participation. Whetung explains, “I think freestyle kayaking became popular because of people seeing tricks and saying ‘wow, I want to try that!’ Now people see the latest combo huge air trick on some crazy wave and say, ‘there is no way I want to do that.’ ” Leaders within the whitewater kayaking community, however, have demonstrated the commitment and potential to work towards increasing its participant base and accordingly improving the sport’s longevity. Few are genuinely worried that whitewater kayaking and even freestyle in particular will become a lost art.
On a final note, while studying how freestyle kayaking has evolved gives perspective on freestyle’s current and possible future representations, it also allows for greater insight in understanding why freestyle evolved as it did. Even with a clear map of how boats and tricks evolved, it is more difficult to grasp what drove this evolution to progress so quickly and profoundly. Some influences are more obvious, such as the growth of extreme sports – in particularly extreme freestyle sports – within the last 50 years. Most valuable to understand, however, are any factors relating to this progression that are more unique to freestyle kayaking. The combination of freestyle kayaking’s participant-driven industry and its unique manner of competition reveal themselves to be perhaps the most influential and important of these factors.
What makes the freestyle kayak industry unique and important in driving rapid, profound progression is the fact that, quite consistently, its top producers are closely linked to top performers. It is not uncommon for top producers to be top kayakers themselves if not be the recipients of direct input from freestyle’s elite. A study[119] shows that regular users of equipment are much more efficient in innovating than producers. What can be seen with freestyle is a major overlap between the two, meaning that those with the greatest knowledge and perspective of freestyle progression through its representation in tricks have also been the ones creating the boats to perform new tricks in. With many other sports, equipment promoted by leading athletes oftentimes represents little input from the expert athlete and more of a marketing campaign. With freestyle kayaking, on the other hand, the designers are directly incentivized to innovate because, being users of their products, they are creating their own equipment.
This concept is closely tied to the role of freestyle competition in driving evolution. Take Eric Jackson, for example, a leading boat designer as well as a winning competitor (user). His motive to innovate comes from his dependence on what he creates for his own success in competition. According to Jackson, “Competition is 90 percent of the influence” for creating progressive design. Putting the kayaks he paddles on the mainstream market, while the basis for his highly successful company, simply “funds” this personal quest to create the best kayak for him and his team of sponsored athletes. “Being the best one on the water … and a boat designer is a good combo to strive for if you want to lead the way,” he says.[120]
By being both a leading paddler and designer, he is able to bridge any disconnect between users and producers because he himself (with his own competitive ambitions) embodies both. Jackson’s model is seen elsewhere in freestyle kayaking; even if the company’s owner, designer, and lead kayaker are not embodied by the same person, close teams of sponsored athletes working with designers achieve the same effect. By heightening the efficiency at which innovation becomes represented in production, this occurrence within the freestyle kayak industry is greatly responsible for the quick, dramatic evolution of freestyle kayaking.
Studying the themes and influences discussed in this paper is rarely the focus of whitewater enthusiasts. As discussed, doing so can be a great tool for bettering one’s personal understanding of the freestyle kayaking. With increased emphasis and knowledge of playboating’s roots, however, the freestyle kayaking community could also better its approach to confronting its greatest challenge yet: continuing the strong legacy of past and present freestyle kayaking in years to come.
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