Ditidaht youth ages 14 and up have been invited to a three-day elite paddling camp in Burnaby where they will be trained by Canada’s top paddlers, including Olympic bronze medalist Mark Oldershaw.
Canoe/Kayak BC is hosting the invite-only event for national and provincial team athletes from Nov. 10 to 12, and sought to include Ditidaht athletes based on their successes at both the provincial championships in Nanaimo, where Ditidaht took five non-aboriginal provincial titles, and in hosting the BC Aboriginal canoe and kayak championships on Nitinaht Lake where they took 19 aboriginal provincial titles.
See photos at http://www.hashilthsa.com/gallery/bc-aboriginal-canoe-and-kayaking-championship-held-ditidaht
Oldershaw is a third-generation Olympian, following in the footsteps of his father and grandfather. Mark, however, is the only one in the family to make it to the podium, with his third-place finish in the C1-1000 m race held in London, England this summer.
Jason Anson, a sports technologist http://sporttechnologist.com/ who has been working to build the canoe/kayaking program in Ditidaht over the past year, said he believes the experience will be a great one for the young people chosen to attend (the community will soon hold a meeting to decide the participants). He expects the youth to advance their paddling techniques by learning from the best of the best, and that they will learn that they can compete at that high level.
Anson said there is only a short gap to bridge to be successful in the sport over the long-term for this Ditidaht team.
The training camp will be a confidence builder, said Anson, who sees the event as only one of many great things on the horizon for Ditidaht and Nuu-chah-nulth paddlers from other nations, including the North American Indigenous Games, to be held in Regina in 2014. And there is a plan for an Indigenous canoe racing competition as part of the Pan Am Games to be held in Toronto in 2015.
Oldershaw is only one of the Olympians slated to share his knowledge and skill with camp participants. Hugues Fournel, who competed in his first Olympics this year in the K2 – 200, will join Oldershaw, as will Brady Reardon of the 2008 Olympic Games. Reardon competed in the K4 and was the training partner of kayaker Adam van Koeverden, who won silver in the men's K-1 1,000-metre final at the London Games.
