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Kanyon Raft Team |
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History |
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By the end of the ’90s the first racing teams were founded by enthusiastic rafting tour guides who, for that time, gained a lot of useful experiences on the Austrian, Slovenian and some other rivers.
In 2003, at the first time in the history of the World Rafting Championships (WRC) a Hungarian team participated on the races in the Czech Republic. This amateur team was formed by some tour guides of the Kanyon Whitewater Travel Agency, and as such it was the very first Kanyon Raft Team. Despite of their poor racing experiences they came in the 14th place among more than 20 teams from all over the world.
At the end of 2006 the Kanyon Raft Team reborn: young, experienced flat water canoeists entered the team. Next spring, on its very first race on the European Cup in Croatia the new team won 4 medals, and in some disciplines beat some very experienced teams, like the WRC bronze medallist Slovakian and the also high ranked Slovenian team. The same time they beat the team of Hungaroraft and qualified for the WRC 2007 in Korea.
The team had a lot of problems before the big competition around financing and injuries, so the results on the WRC didn’t reach the expectations of themselves. However they came in the midfield among more than 30 teams.
Still in 2008 our team participated in two competitions organised on the venue of the next year’s WRC in Bosnia. On the first one, the pre-WRC /World Cup they won 2 bronze medals, while on the second one, the European Cup race the men and women team won 4 gold, 4 silver and 1 bronze medals.
The Kanyon Raft Team is still preparing very hard for the WRC 2009…
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Hungary does not have high mountains at all, so there are no white waters either.
However Hungarian people have been also interested in the challenges of white water paddling. In the beginning of the ‘90s a couple of travel agencies started to organise white water programs in the near countries for Hungarian tourists. Today it’s a popular entertainment and sport for thousands also in our country.
Short introduction of rafting:
races are organised with boats for 4 and for 6 persons.
There are 4 disciplines: the “sprint” is a time trial on a 1-2 minutes long course for the teams one by one. The “head to head” is organised on the same course as the sprint, two boats compete at the same time, and the winner goes to the next round. In the final the two fastest teams go for the gold.
The “slalom” race is organised on a 3-4 minutes long section of the river and the teams have to pass between 8-12 gates in a predetermined order and directions.
The most difficult discipline is the “down river”. As it is shown by the name in this race the teams have to paddle on a 10-12 km long section down on the river. It takes 40-50 minutes, it’s the most tiring race and requires the ability of “reading the river” well.
In 2005 on the R4 European Championship another team represented Hungary. In the boat of the
Hungaroraft team there were already two ex-professional flat water canoeists, and they won the first bronze medal of the
Hungarian rafting sport. They also participated on the WRC
in the same year organised in Ecuador, but they couldn’t repeat this good result again.
2008 was the year of the European Rafting Championship (ERC). It was organised on the river of Salza in Austria, a very well know river by the members of the
Kanyon Raft Team.
The Hungarian qualifying races for the ERC were more popular among the Hungarian teams than ever before, even though all the 5 teams of the Kanyon Raft could quite easily qualify to the ERC.
And the hard training finally brought the well deserved results: the men team won 2 silver medals and the fresh women team had a 4th and a 5th place among the best teams of Europe.
Summarising: on the ERC 2008 the Kanyon Raft Team came nine times in one of the first 6 places. So far this has been the greatest success of both the Kanyon Raft Team, and the Hungarian rafting sport.