The Day I Almost Won the Black
Rob’s been after me for the past year to get into a Junior C-4 crew at Senobe. I have been putting him off because I have no intention of traveling out west for Nationals. Last night I was at the club going for my first paddle in 12 months, and Mark and Eddie were giving me a hard time about it. Rob said that his strategy for winning the Black this year is to put my name on the program and watch all the best crews drop out. Then he subs me out and puts Nick in instead. Something tells me the days of my name striking fear in the hearts of Canadian Canoers are long gone. Anyway, this all got me thinking about Junior C-4 and about the day that I - and seven other people - almost won the Black.
For those unfamiliar with The Black (the two of you reading in Australia I mean), a short explanation is in order. First you must understand what a Canadian “Junior” is (or at least used to be). An International Junior is, of course, any athlete who is under the age of 19 on December 31st of the year of competition. In Canada, we called that a Juvenile. A “Canadian Junior” is an International Senior (i.e. over the age of 18) who has not yet received sufficient points at a National Championship to be dominant, or, is so far from the peak of their career that they have not finished in the top five in a Senior race for 4 straight years. Status is given on a per-event basis, so it is possible to be a Senior in C-1 1000m, while still Junior in all other events.
Complicating things even more is the fact that National team athletes can be Junior, but once they turn Senior they remain Senior as long as they are on the National team.Confused? Good. Here is what you really need to know. In the Junior C-4 race, the top two teams at the National Championships receive enough points so that they must race Senior the following four years. There is almost always one or two excellent young canoers who are in the race, so it generally makes it difficult for an older crew to come back from Senior and win. Timing your attempt at the event can be crucial, and it is rare for someone to win the race more than once in a career.
Now, those familiar with canoeing but not familiar with Canada will assume the C-4 is a long, sleek, fast boat that is propelled down the course by four skilled canoers who must paddle extremely well and perfectly together or the result is a horrible shaky and ugly-looking race. You are wrong. Although Canadians have been racing C-4 since the beginning of time, our boat design did not progress much past 1936. If you were to look at a C-1 from the Berlin Games, you would see a boat that looks much like the Canadian C-4; slow, fat, and relatively easy to paddle. The boat was a great leveler. Even four great canoers could not make it glide, and trying to go too fast would often result in a bounce that killed your speed faster than throwing out an anchor.
The last thing you will need to know is that the winner of the Junior C-4 race at the Canadian National Championship is awarded one of the most legendary trophies in Canadian sport. The Black Trophy. The trophy stands about four feet tall, is made of silver, and has been awarded for the Junior C-4 race since the early twentieth century. It held a ridiculous amount of beer and has been the subject of many a story coming out of the Nationals after-party (some of which should be enough to convince people to never drink from it again). Every canoer in Canada wants to get his name on the Black.
Back to 1988. I was in a great Black crew. There was Kevin Mullen, Glen Girard, Brian Burns, and me. Glen and Brian had raced in1987 at the Junior Worlds. Kevin and Glen would go on to almost take the C-2 entry for the 1992 Olympics. I was only 16, but well on my way to becoming a dominant C-1 paddler in Canada. Together we were a strong smart crew, who combined to win most of the Junior and Juvenile canoeing medals at the 1988 Canadian Championships. We were the heavy favorites in the C-4.
Popular opinion was that the second best crew in the race was from Banook. Albert McDonald, Carl Francis, Steve Gallant and Dave Gallant. They were a more mature bunch, most of them approaching the end of their careers.
Adding some colour tot the race was the crew from Cartierville, Quebec. In the crew was Bob Kay. A Canadian canoeing legend, had last won the Black in 1968. His crew certainly were past their prime and would take on the role of ‘Old Bull’ on that day.
It was a typical Lake Banook day - sunny, warm and a screaming headwind. There were whitecaps on the first 800m of the course and there had been several casualties throughout the day. In fact, Larry Cain’s crew sank in the Senior C4 that day. But my boat was full of Lake Banook natives, we had seen it all before and were unconcerned.
I remember the race quite well, considering it took place nearly 22 years ago. We got off to an early and commanding lead. I looked around a few times and saw absolutely nobody. Watching the video later (memory says CBC had the race shown tape-delayed but I have not seen it since) we came through the 500 almost 50m ahead of the next crew. At that point I remember thinking the race was in the bag…
…Meanwhile, somewhere behind us, Banook was putting a plan into action.
Realizing that the race was unfolding as predicted and that they were likely to be ‘Blackwashed’, they began to slow down. And not wanting to appear too obvious, they started early and put themselves in a position to finish a convincing third. Cartierville were happy to oblige and took over second place with several hundred meters to go. Calm and steady were their words to live by.
As we closed on the finish the crowd was cheering loudly. Orenda was on it’s way to a second National Title and we were excited. The Black was the biggest race of the day and everyone was watching. We were about to become the first crew from our club to win the coveted trophy.With 150m to go our boat began to behave strangely. We veered hard right and I was forced to pull the bow over. As I did so I realized that I was in water above my bottom knee. The boat had veered because of the huge mass of water we had taken on. Two strokes later the stern was underwater, two strokes after that the bow was underwater and we were swimming. Our dream was over and a hush fell on the crowd.
(With apolgies to Bill Jensen who owns the photo)
Then, the cheering masses went wild again as they realized the real drama was only just beginning.
As we went down, the crew from Banook came to the sudden realization that they had made a serious error in judgment. Had they continued on at there regular pace they would have been in position to claim the gold after we deep-sixed in the final 150. What they had done instead was allow Cartierville to get into a convincing second - which had of course just turned into a sizable lead.
The atmosphere inside the Banook boat at that moment must have been foul. There was a sudden burst as they thought they had a chance to catch Bob Kay. Then an even more pronounced capitulation as they realized they could not win. The end result was a Banook crew standing still just a few meters from the finish, waiting for someone to claim the honor of being Blackwashed.And who were the champions. Cartierville of course.
The ‘Old Bulls’ had beaten us all.
August 31st, 2010 at 6:53 am
As a young Orenda girl, who worshipped her older teammates, and prayed for a second National Burgee for our club, this is how I remembered that day:
At the age of 11, I knew all about the Black. The race for the Black trophy, Junior men’s C-4, is arguably the most important race in our National Championships. In the world of Canadian Canoeing, nothing rivals the sheer testosterone-fueled glory of a Black win.
That year, my brother Kevin, seven years my senior, was part of an amazing team poised to win the Black. They were: the burly Brian Burns, my powerful brother, the more graceful Glen Girard, and the technically perfect Stevie Giles. They were awesome, and everybody knew it. The anticipation from the guys themselves, and from every spectator, was incredible. Then, inconceivably- disaster. Even to a little girl, it was an event to be seared in my memory; watching those four big, strong boys (men?) whom I loved and admired blow the competition away, only to sink their boat meters from the finish line. There was this one stroke when they paused in mid-air, realising in that moment, that they were going down- I’ll never forget it. When the safety boat dropped them off at the judges’ tower, they were all in tears, and so was I.