Sprint Paddling

What I Learned in Sacramento.

Our Canadian teams did really well in the Int'l Va'a Federation (IVF) World Sprint Championships held in Sacramento this August. The women's team won gold and were 'upstarts' according to a local radio announcer. There were teams from all over the world and many from the south Pacific Islands (Tahiti, New Zealand, Hawai'i, Fiji, Leeward Islands, etc).  And it was a lot of fun to watch! Most notable were the Tahitian team of 300 paddlers.

In watching the first OC6 men's open outrigger competition, the Tahitian #1 boat was amazingly fast. The only team that came even close to them was the #2 Tahitian boat. And so it went through the whole competition.

In trying to understand why, I thought about heritage and came up with the size of these guys as the reason.  I thought half of them looked like they were sired by the Greek god Mercury and were borne by Demeter.  Most are built with these huge bodies with big V shaped backs that look like they have been paddling for a 1000 years.  True, by the way, genetically, the Polynesians have been paddling before time as we know it.  However,  all of the history of Tahiti does not completely explain why the Tahitians were usually one, two and three in the medals for each of the 53 categories when the rest of the world is enthusiastic about paddling and training very hard as well. What they have going for them is technique. Sprint technique to be exact!

In many of the other men's boats, the sheer power and enthusiasm that gets let off in a 500 meter race causes the boat to bounce, and not just little bouncing, many of the boats are literally bouncing up and down 6 inches.  In trying to understand how to be a better paddler, I watch others who are successful and study technique. Most big male paddlers, who are also enthusiastic paddlers and like to win, really dig in and cause this huge bouncing in the boat.  Some of the faster North American boats glide along as if they were being pulled by a big cable and have no bouncing, whatsoever.  But the rest bounce...a lot. I was always told this was not really a good thing and logic tells me it does not make a boat go faster. Well, I noticed the Tahitian #1 and #2 boats also bounced, however they were different.The two boats that were consistently winning the men's races bounced as well, but out of phase with the North Americans.  When we drive down at the catch, the boat dives down into the water. Common sense would tell us the boat has more drag at this point.  The very point in time when we are trying to overcome drag with our biggest thrust is when we push the boat deepest into the water.  At the catch with the paddle, the big Tahitian men drive down with the paddle and the boat rises UP and OUT of the water and then the power thrust has way more effect because there is a whole lot less boat in the water. There is a video on this web site by Mindy Clark where Johnny Pukea is describing Danny Ching's technique as doing exactly the same thing.  He is putting his body weight on the paddle at the catch allowing the boat to come up out of the water. Less drag, more thrust.

The under 19 Tahitian paddler Taaroa Dubois, who is just a boy really, even though he is over 6 foot and built like the best of world class paddlers is featured in the following video where he wins the 500 meter single Va'a sprint by three boat lengths.  It is easy to see when he drives his paddle down in the water, he is putting his whole weight on it and the canoe rises UP and OUT of the water.  Have a look. He also has a double leg drive going on where he has his ass sliding back and forth in the slippery fibreglass seat, paddling essentially like a rowing skull with the seat on tracks.  He gets so much power into the boat with his double leg drive, that his speed is in a different category from the rest of the paddlers. We are taught leg drive, but the ass slide is beyond anything we teach.  I think the ass slide is just plain 'wanna win' enthusiasm.

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The Tahitians have a lot of power to put in the water. Because of the single rudderless Va'a and the long stroke style there is a rooster tail in the air for the final 50 meters with the fastest of them. I suspect the rooster tail is part of the modified "J" steering stroke.  Their paddle return is so fast that the column of water from the previous stroke is still in the air when the next column is thrown up.  See the photo at the start of the story.

My wife, Lise and I were walking back to the hotel one day, when we came across this old guy pushing a baby carriage and wearing paddling gear.  We struck up a conversation with him; well he is Tahitian and speaks French, so my wife struck up a conversation with him.  Turns out he was one of the coaches for the Tahitian team and in his very relaxed matter of fact way, he said he was really impressed with the power and strength of the Canadian paddlers.  "They just don't know how to sprint very well. They are so slow at getting the paddle forward." He went on and described their paddle season as having three parts, the sprints, the iron races and the change races.  Each one has a totally different technique.  I think us Canadians have more or less similar technique for all.  For sprints we just paddle harder so we only have to last for a couple of minutes and for distance we change it up so we can last longer.

I think the Tahitians win many of the races because they totally understand paddling, are really smart about it AND have exceptional technique specific to the type of paddling and the horsepower available.  The young Taaroa Dubois makes me think of the paddling techniques described in the reading I have done from Imre Kemecsey, only this boy takes weight transfer and power transference to a whole new level.