Red Cliff – After more than 40 kayakers had finished their two laps down the daunting froth of Homestake Creek, a lost friend made a silent run.
Heads bowed as the tight international community of vagabond competitors remembered Daniel DeLaVergne, an iconic expedition kayaker and filmmaker who died in March while scouting for a future movie.
The kayaking legend is alive in the minds and hearts of hundreds he touched, including Pat Keller, a fellow North Carolina paddler whose rocketing career started with DeLaVergne’s nudging. Scrawled on Keller’s kayak cockpit, visible every time he snaps on his sprayskirt: WWDD?
Thursday, apparently DeLa- Vergne would have won, because the 19-year-old Keller beat the best to regain the extreme creeking title he won in 2003.
“The harder you go, the sooner it’s over,” said the Asheville, N.C., paddler, whose second lap down the quarter-mile plummet of low-volume drops left him a whopping four seconds ahead of paddling patriarch and former Olympian Eric Jackson and third-place local boy Brad Ludden. “That was Daniel’s favorite quote. That’s what pushed me today.”
Keller aced his second lap, maneuvering through tight slots while hammering big strokes to win the creeking competition on the second day of the Vail Valley’s Teva Mountain Games. Jackson, who won Wednesday’s paddlecross race and is a relative stranger to anything but first, said he is always happy to relinquish the top spot if one of the many youngsters in the sport earns it.
“Pat earned it, no question,” Jackson said.
Among the women, it was all down under, with Australian Tanya Faux grabbing her fifth consecutive paddling medal this season and New Zealand superstar Nikki Kelly taking a close second. Kelly, however, argued the judges may have switched her second-lap time with Faux’s, a lap that meant Faux somehow gained 10 seconds on her pal Kelly. Judges were reviewing the race video late Wednesday.
“I really felt like she had won,” Faux said. “That surprised me.”
The competition was fierce, as local valley veterans with years of Homestake experience were handily dismissed by the elite international army of paddlers.
“This is a different genre of kayaking, for sure,” said South African big-water master Steve Fisher, whose skills on huge water like Africa’s Zambezi River require a much different mind- set and expertise than what was needed on the 50 cubic feet per second sluicing through Homestake.
Today’s lineup
The pro kayak rodeo in Vail’s Gore Creek promises to continue kayaking’s rapid progression with new variations of seemingly new aerial stunts. Watch for Jackson to fight hard to keep the young bucks from tarnishing his world champion crown. And a new freeride mountain-biking demo will provide a glimpse at the Saturday freeride challenge, with head-to-head biking gladiators racing down a technical 200-foot course.
In Super Stats: Results. 11DD
Jason Blevins can be reached at 303-820-1374 or jblevins@denverpost.com.
