Gorge Games Press

pkh · Since 27 Feb 2005 6549 Posts Couve / Hood Honored Founder

http://www.theoutlookonline.com/sports/story.php?story_id=121613817482351600

Imagine racing down the White Salmon River, tumbling over Husum Falls with little more than a life jacket and a boogey board. Imagine handling class IV rapids in a head-to-head, full-contact competition, against the best in the world.

Or imagine looking on at the professionals in this spectacle, while you’re safely from the banks of the river, near Husum, Wash.

“We call them insane,” Darcy Hunter of the Gorge Games says of the riders.

The sport is known as riverboarding, and it is among the newest and most extreme in the 2008 Gorge Games.

The games, taking place for the first time since 2004, provide the opportunity to compete in and view various wind, water and outdoors sports in the Columbia River Gorge from Thursday through Sunday.

Tickets for the event are $20 per day, $35 for an all-day pass, and $8 for children ages 5-12.

The Gorge Games feature 10 sports, including the perennial favorites – windsurfing, kiteboarding and outrigger canoeing.

“The Gorge is internationally known for its wind sports. They’re highly visible and appealing to the general public because of how dynamic they are,” kiteboarding director David Tyburski says.

Kiteboarding, according to Tyburski, is the world’s fastest-growing water sport. This year’s events have more than 70 people registered for the three disciplines: freestyle, big air and course racing.

The field has some of the world’s best kiteboarders, such as No. 1-ranked Kevin Langeree of the Netherlands and No. 3 Alvaro Onieva of Spain.

Tyburski believes the Gorge Games will be great for the sport.

“Worldwide, it’s very well known, but this could showcase it in the U.S. and give it a media outlet,” he says. “It will help in trying to give it some legitimacy as a broadcast sport.”

Tyburski also believes that the games’ four-year break has increased enthusiasm for all wind and Gorge sports.

“It’s an iconic event for a lot of people. They know the name ‘Gorge Games,’” he says. “And the fact that it’s returning, that’s generating a lot of excitement.

Windsurfing begins on Friday with its freestyle division; the time will be determined by wind conditions. There are four different windsurfing age groups (Junior 18 and under, men’s and women’s 19 to 34, masters 35 to 44 and grand masters 45 and over) competing in three divisions: freestyle, super cross and race course.

The Gorge Games staff also expects riverboarding, though relatively unknown, to be significant crowd pleaser. The sport involves riders navigating rapids while lying on a 4-foot by 2-foot board clad in helmet, wetsuit, life jacket and flippers. There are four divisions: slalom, boardercross, extreme downriver and freestyle. The first event, slalom, takes place at 10 a.m. on Friday.

“To introduce a new sport like riverboarding at a national level, we’re thrilled,” Gorge Games CEO Joshua Ryan says. “It’s our most extreme sport, and we’re generally on the cutting edge of finding new opportunities and challenges for our athletes.”

In addition to its new and old fan favorites, the Gorge Games hosts three national championships this summer, in slalom skateboarding, adventure racing and 505 sailing.

“We’re very proud of our national championships,” Ryan says.

Skateboard slalom takes place on Friday from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m.. The adventure race starts at 5 p.m. Friday and runs for 24 consecutive hours. The sailing championships are at 10 a.m. Friday.

The remaining Gorge Games events are the 10-kilometer trail run, mountain biking, a half marathon and kayaking.

The Gorge Games began in 1994. They had a decade-long run before the four-year hiatus.

Ryan says the games lost their national television contract and national sponsorships, and without the sponsorship funding, the previous owners were unable to maintain the event.

“There’s a lot of challenges with logistics; it’s an incredibly difficult event to put on,” Ryan says. “For an average event in a downtown area, we’d need about five permits. For this, we have a total of 78.”

Event planners Ryan and Alan Peters, co-founder of the 2008 Gorge Games, have been planning for this year’s event since September 2007, even before they acquired the naming rights in January. The two have a three-year business plan to return the games to their competitive and financial peak.

“They’ve always been successful – fans and athletes love the games,” Ryan says of the motivation to return the Gorge Games. “We thought we had an opportunity to manage the financial and organizational part of it better.”

This year, Ryan and Peters have regained a national TV contract (with Fox Sports, which will televise the games from Aug. 18 through Aug. 22 during “Gorge Games Week” into an estimated 84 million homes, according to Hunter, the Gorge Games’ public relations manager.

The games have also switched from a major corporate sponsor to several local sponsors, both in order to prevent the drastic loss of sponsorship and to further involvement from the Gorge community. The Gorge Games are estimated to generate $3 million in revenue for the Gorge economy.

The new management has organized a winter version of the Gorge Games, which Hunter believes could do even more for the area.

“The winter games will take place in March,” Hunter says. “We’re really excited for them. The winter is a real down time for the area, so it’s going to be great for local business.”

Another addition to the Gorge Games that is expected to have a positive impact on the Gorge community is a commitment to sustainability, known as the “Gorge Games Green Event.”

The event has teamed with six local environmental organizations to ensure that “green is woven into the fabric of the games,” Ryan says.

The organizations involved are the Columbia Gorge Ecology Institution, the Columbia River Keepers, the Columbia Gorge Earth Center, the Cooper Spur Race Team, the Oregon Trail and Next Door.

“We’re going to have a zero carbon footprint, or close to it,” Ryan says. “All of our vendors are using biodegradable products. All our energy is from 100 percent renewable wind sources, and all our generators run on biodiesel.”

Several cleanups already have occurred in the competition areas, and the carbon footprint will be measured both before and after the event. The goal of the Gorge Games is to leave the Gorge in better condition after the weekend.

“Gorge Games wants to be a great steward within the community, and it believes fundamentally that taking care of Gorge communities and all their various stakeholders means those communities, will in turn, take care of us,” sustainability director Suzanne Wright says.

“The Gorge is a fragile ecosystem,” Ryan says, “and we want to take care of that area so that people can continue to do this in the future.”