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Clubs Vie for Whitewater Race Bragging Rights

By Larry Lempert

It's proudly proclaimed on the CCA website, and is oft-repeated by Potomac Downriver Race aficionados: "The CCA Downriver Race has been held every year since 1956, making it the Nation's oldest consecutively run canoe and kayak race." The race held May 11 was the 69th.

But wait! The renowned Salida, CO, FIBArk Whitewater Festival boasts on its website that its downriver race is the oldest in the nation and has been held every June since 1949.

And wait again! The Westfield River Wildwater Race in Massachusetts says, like CCA, that its race this past April was its 69^th.

With essential bragging rights obviously at stake, the Cruiser turned to a website that seeks to comprehensively track whitewater race results in the U.S. and Canada. PaddleStats, maintained by Connecticut open boater Eric Jones, has a wealth of data on 445 races and 640,487 racers. The site lists four races that began earlier than CCA's; FIBArk would be a fifth, but Jones has been unable to get good data for it.

According to PaddleStats, none of its four pose danger to CCA's oldest-consecutively-run claim. Per PaddleStats:

The Classique internationale de canots de la Mauricie (Quebec) is the grandaddy of all whitewater races, starting in 1934, but Covid caused it to be canceled in 2020. (World War II also caused it to be canceled.)
The AuSable Canoe Marathon (Michigan) started in 1947, but it too succumbed to Covid in 2020, and neither was it held in 1969.
The Gold Rush Derby (Manitoba) launched in 1951, but the last results are from 1991 (and take care not to confuse it with various horse races and demolition derbies that dominate "Gold Rush Derby" Google searches).
Westfield was first run in 1954, but the 2020 and 2021 races were canceled due to Covid. It has a good claim to have been run 69 times, but not in a row.

And then there's FIBArk, which stands for "First in Boating in the Arkansas River." Their website gives convincing details about the first race, in 1949. But some CCAers have thought that FIBArk, like the other contenders, was canceled in 2020 due to Covid. "For a race as old and famous as that one, it's been extremely difficult to collect old results," says PaddleStats' Jones, who hopes to work at some point on getting reliable FIBArk data. However, Jones acknowledges that the race was not canceled in 2020 but was held in August rather than the usual June.

Any doubt about 2020 is laid to rest by an article in the Ark Valley Voice, in which a Monday Aug. 10 article reports on the downriver races having been held over the weekend.

Covid caused CCA to delay its 2020 race too, holding it in September rather than May. Organizers hoped that by September the pandemic would have eased, but no such luck. Among precautions taken was that competitors timed themselves, avoiding running en masse.

Jones does make the point that the FIBArk race course has varied. "FIBArk has completely changed the course it uses for the downriver race," he says. The FIBArk website's event history describes the 1949 race as 57 miles from Salida to Canon City (only two of 23 entrants reached the finish line), shortened in 1950 to 45 miles ending in Parkdale and portaging around the most dangerous rapids, followed in 1951 by a 26-mile race from Salida to Cotapaxi with no portages, altered in 2019 to 14 miles starting upstream in Brown's Canyon and ending in Salida. Finally, the 26-mile marathon course used beginning in 2020 goes from above Brown's Canyon to Salida. (There are half-marathon, intermediate, and novice races too, not to mention a Hooligan Race that is "open to anything that floats that's not a boat.")

All of which leads former CCA Race Chair Jen Sass to comment, "Is that really the same race or just the same club hosting it?"

Says Jen, "Unlike FIBARK, which significantly changed race locations several times, our CCA race has run the same course, ending at Sycamore Island, for the entire historical duration. As Heraclitus wisely noted, no man paddles in the same river twice, since it is not the same waters and he is not the same man. However, Heraclitus' even wiser wife said that only she who paddles the same river route is running the same race. As our own beloved CCA Downriver Race is itself ancient, I think it is only appropriate that we let ancient woman's wisdom settle the debate—the CCA Potomac downriver race is #1."

CCA Chair David (Cotton) Cottingham's comment? "If she's quoting ancient Greeks, she obviously has thought about this more than I." The Cruiser asked FIBArk to comment but did not get a response.

The FIBArk and Westfield origin stories have some similarity, by the way. FIBArk event history says, "It is not clear if the original idea came from idle talk over coffee or a dare for bragging rights over beer." Westfield's history page is clear in stating that the idea started with friends sitting around the Whippernon Club bar in Russell, MA, telling tales. Club owner Dick Waterhouse "challenged the braggarts to prove their skills in a race…. The prize would be a cold case of beer, courtesy of Waterhouse." The ante was upped another case of beer by a restaurant owner upstream, and the race was on.

The idea for the Westfield race was conceived in 1953 and the first race took place in 1954, confirms Race Director Harry Rock, having checked with his race history experts. He acknowledges the cancellations due to Covid and offered his congratulations to CCA on its longer consecutive-years run. With the number of races tied at 69 each, he says, "I think we can both claim bragging rights of being among the oldest competitive canoe races in the country providing exciting downriver whitewater/wildwater competition for individuals to challenge each other in." On April 20, between Westfield's 5-mile expert race and 8-mile classic race, there were 310 registered paddlers. (The Potomac race had 66.)

Westfield Race 1954 at the starting line (photo courtesy of Westfield River Watershed Association)

Perhaps giving the CCA some ammunition, FIBArk plays a little fast and loose with its claim to be, as well as the oldest, the longest race in North America (at the top of its event page) or at least in the U.S. (farther down the page). But wait! The AuSable Canoe Marathon runs for 120 miles.

"Sometimes races are meticulous about their recordkeeping, but in a lot of cases it's wishful thinking," says Jones. The Quinnipiac Downriver Classic (Connecticut), he says, which began in 1980, "is actually a year OLDER than it claims (making it unique among races), and I can even pinpoint the year it lost count (it reused the previous year's flyer and didn't change the numbering)."

What will Potomac Downriver Race organizers say next year? "One of the two oldest consecutively run races in the nation" doesn't have quite the pizzazz. It seems likely that they will stick by their claim, or maybe, as our Alf Cooley says, a chute-out is called for.

Postscript

Alf has felt the impact of flawed race recordkeeping. His attention having been called to PaddleStats, he recounts:

"Paging through it, I came to the Housatonic (Conn) Race—and seeing the posted winner of the initial 1973 run brought tears to my eyes. My sister Susan and I entered it in our Grumman, and knowing that the middle stretch of the run is in a wide pebbly place, we had lathered the bottom with Simoniz. Sure enough, although starting in the middle of the entrants, we paddled up to the beginning of the release water. (Remember, this was their first race.) And sure enough, the other contestants were out of their boats pulling them over the rocks as Suze and I clattered down over the stones to the Housatonic Meadows finish. Like two Cheshire cats, we turned up at Housatonic Regional High School for the award ceremony—to be told that a bunch of the start times had been bobbled. Guess where ours were! That cured me of racing for many years."