Monday photo feature

Here's another whitewater slalom photo in honor of the world championships starting this Wednesday at Deep Creek, Maryland.  The slalom worlds have been going on since 1949, but this is only the second time that they have been held in the United States.

In this photo, which I took at a World Cup series event on the Ocoee River in 2000, Cathy Hearn of the U.S. glides into an upstream gate.  One of the finest athletes the U.S. has ever had in any sport, in my opinion, Cathy grew up in an era when it wasn't particularly fashionable for women to be good at sports.  Going into the 1977 world championships at Spittal, Austria, a U.S. athlete had never medaled, but Cathy and two teammates struck bronze in the women's kayak team event.  Then, at the 1979 worlds at Jonquiere, Quebec, Cathy took triple gold, winning the slalom individual, slalom team, and downriver team events.  She went on to win numerous medals over the next two decades: in slalom individual competition, she took silver in 1981, bronze in 1989, and bronze in 1997; in slalom team competition, she won bronze in 1981, bronze in 1987, silver in 1989, and silver in 1993.  She also was on the U.S. Olympic team in 1992 and 1996; she almost certainly would have been an Olympian in '80, '84, and '88 as well, except that slalom was not restored to the Olympic programme until 1992.