Having just competed in the Olympic Games the year before, the C2 team of Wayne Dickert and Horace Holden gets the 1997 season underway at the Nantahala Doubleheader.
It's been known for a few years now that the 2016 Olympics would be the last for this most fascinating of boat classes. In the 2020 Games at Tokyo, men's C2 will be replaced by women's C1. The purpose of the change is to bring about greater gender equity, and that's certainly an honorable goal. But the sad reality for what the IOC considers "fringe" sports is that the addition of female athletes must always be made at the expense of some male athletes.
Now, in a weekend announcement that practically nobody saw coming, the International Canoe Federation has declared that, effective immediately, men's C2 will no longer be contested at any of its elite-level international events (i.e., the world championships and the World Cup series). Any male C2 teams that have spent this past winter training are suddenly, inexplicably, out of luck. Slalom racers and fans around the globe are stunned and outraged.
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