Squirt Boating Message Board

This just happened to be on the top of some old magazines I found and it is a great one for Throwback Thursday.,
This is an article written by Scott Docherty not long after the squirt class in rodeos were won by paddlers in a Wave Sport XXX. This is Rapid magazine Vol. 2 issue 3, Summer 2000.

The scan has some blurry flaws so I made it as a huge file. Particularly the third one.
Browser sized images are further down but you will need to download the full sized file at the links below to be able to zoom in a read the text.
Right mouse the links and save to your hard drive.

cover 3.31MB 2550 x 3507 pixels


page one of article 11.7mb 2550 x 3507 pixels


page 2 of article 147mb 10200 x 14028 pixels. I don't recommend even trying this one on mobile or tablet. It is quite huge.

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I'm loving throwback Thursdays thus far - even if the conversation is limited at this point. I find it interesting, though not surprising, that 15 years later mystery riders continue to exist on the peripheral of kayaking - and more specifically, competitive kayaking. Whatever the reasons - the rules surrounding competitive squirting (NOWR, ICF, etc.) largely ignored the mystery move.

While at the Ottawa when working with New River Academy in 2006 I chanced upon an ICF event and competed. Truth be told, I had a break from the students and went up to hit some mysteries at Smoothie only to find the competition to be in full swing. I was floored by the flat-water skills of some of the paddlers, especially Koyo from Japan - but he was in a plastic boat. He won with 0 seconds underwater & tons of points from flippy things on the surface, while I finished second after throwing a couple cartwheels and dropping some 25+ sec rides. At the time, my understanding of the scoring system was that the mystery move was the multiplier. Now my understanding of the properties of zero in mathematics (I am currently a Math teacher) at the time was that anytime you multiplied zero to something the product was zero. Apparently, that property did not hold true under the scoring system at that time.

From what I can tell now, and maybe someone closer to the ICF stuff (Clay or Stephen) can elaborate on this - is that the current scoring system is more mystery friendly? And that Mathematical Properties of Zero now carry weight at an ICF sponsored event?

Now back to what I find interesting... Has this shift in scoring been made to pull some mystery riders back into the fold at an ICF event or has the scoring change been made to highlight what many of us feel embodies the essence/spirit of squirt boating?

i'm curious, as someone who isn't very good or consistent with surface moves....when/why/how did a mystery move become a multiplier? does that mean that someone who isn't very good on the surface, doing mobius sequences, can still win because his or her boat can hang underwater for a long period of time? and if yes is the answer, then to me it looks like we've got a ton of world champs buzzing around. hooray for everyone!

I don't know the history of the scoring, but here is what I know.

No, you cannot win by just doing mystery moves. It has never been like that. The surface moves set your base score and your mystery moves act as a multiplier. Now in the past, the whole multiplier thing was b.s. The scoring heavily favored the surface moves, which is why Dan Gavere was able to win World's in 2000 in a XXX. And that trend continued for a long time. To my knowledge, the scoring remained static for a long time, but it seems like there has been a shift to value the mystery move more.

I looked online for the scoring system out of curiosity and did not get very far. I could never locate Appendix A that detailed how the multiplier actually multiplies. I just know from experience, in the past, it did not act as a true multiplier.

It should be a balanced affair, as you shouldn't be able to win by dropping bombs or throwing ends in a play-boat. And it looks like it is starting to finally get that way. But again, maybe someone that actually knows what they are talking about can chime in.