Montgomery to Paris with Evy
From Montgomery to Paris with Evy
Evy Leibfarth and the 2024 Summer Olympics
By Alton Chewning
Carolina Paddler brings you a recent article on the Olympic slalom trials in Montgomery. The report by Rolando Arrieta was featured on National Public Radio. Carolina Paddler first met Rolando at the 2022 Green Narrows Race. Arrieta was covering the event and the sport he loves, and hoping his bosses at NPR would find the story compelling enough to merit a couple of minutes of Morning Edition airtime.
Evy was hardly unknown. At the tender age of 17, she competed in the Tokyo Olympics in canoe and kayak slalom, alone a remarkable accomplishment but she wanted more. She wanted back for the Paris Olympics to race again and to ascend the winner’s dais.
Arrieta was entranced by Leibfarth. She was young–even for a young person’s sport–tenacious, skilled and possessing the good looks and effervescent personality that led Red Bull to sign her to their sponsorship team. Now she pursues an Olympic medal and Arrieta wants to follow the chase. A crowded field of journalists will follow Evy, particularly as she advances. She’s made the first step, as you will read below in Arrieta’s report from Montgomery.
There are other mentions in Rolando’s article that capture the CCC’s attention. He writes glowingly of the Montgomery course where many club members visited last year. Arrieta talks to Scott Shipley, well known in our area for his work designing the Charlotte White Water Center and for his consulting work on the Neuse River Park in Raleigh.
Arrieta fell in love with the spirit and excitement of the North Carolina whitewater scene. He joined the CCC and returned in the summer to paddle with us during Week of Rivers. Rolando had paddled many difficult rivers in his younger years, learning the discipline on Mid-Atlantic rivers. Rolando enjoyed the thrills and camaraderie but life-demands led him away from steady paddling. The last two years have marked his return to a full-body whitewater diet.
Leibfarth, of course, is the main attraction. She’s a native of Bryson City and many club members have known Evy since she was a beginning paddler. We like to claim Evy and our claims will only intensify with her accomplishments.
“Alabama holds its first ever U.S. Olympic trial for a sport that’s little-known there”
APRIL 15, 202412:44 PM ET
by Rolando Arrieta NPR
MONTGOMERY, Ala. — Tammy Sterling had plans to go out of town this past weekend. Instead, she stayed home to attend an athletic event she’d never seen before.
“I am actually watching the Olympic trials, and I’m going to see somebody that I watched today at the Paris Olympics in 2024. It’s just amazing. I love it,” Sterling said.
The U.S. Olympic Team trials for canoe and kayak slalom were held Saturday and Sunday [April 13-14] at Montgomery Whitewater, a new artificial watersports complex near downtown Montgomery. Hundreds of curious Alabamians turned out for the event.
Cindy Riggins was intrigued by the caliber of athletes who had traveled to her hometown for this competition.
“It looks like a fun sport. Looks very tiring — you have to definitely be in shape,” she said.
In canoe and kayak slalom, athletes race against the clock navigating through a series of red and green gates hanging above raging rapids. Points are deducted if they touch or miss any of the gates. Coaches, teammates, friends and parents ran alongside the course, encouraging and cheering the racer down to the finish line.
“They chant: up up up!” said kayaker Nik Nijhawan. “That’s because the red gates are also called up gates so it’s our own variation of, go go go,” Nijhawan said.
Nijhawan, 16, is from Colorado and said he does not expect to make the Olympic team this year — “but sometime in the next 10 years it would be amazing.”
Evy Leibfarth, 20, from Bryson City, N.C., had the fastest time in both kayak and canoe slalom events and was the only athlete among the nearly 70 who competed in Montgomery to secure an Olympic spot in the women’s canoe slalom. The remaining spots for Team USA will be determined in Oklahoma City in two weeks.
“This weekend has been amazing for me. I’m really proud of my racing this weekend. Overall, it’s been great, emotional and so much fun.” said Leibfarth, who’ll be competing in her second Olympics after finishing outside the top 10 in two events in Tokyo in 2020.
“It’s been a dream of mine to go to Paris for a really long time and I’m really stoked to make that a reality,” Leibfarth added.
Boosting the city’s athletic profile
Local leaders hope an Olympic-sanctioned event like this will help the Montgomery economy and put the city on the map as a sports tourism destination.
Mayor Steven L. Reed said that hosting the U.S. Olympic trials speaks to “a pivot we want to make, to make sure that sports tourism is also a big part of what’s happening here.”
He said he sees a kayaking and canoeing competition of this level as a way to break down racial, economic and social barriers, particularly among kids. “Maybe they can be the first one from Montgomery or maybe one of the first ones from Alabama to bring home a medal” in these events, the mayor said.
Montgomery Whitewater was built by the county for about $90 million and opened in July. It’s the third artificial whitewater park in the U.S., joining facilities in Oklahoma City and Charlotte. It’s part of a broader shift in the sport, with almost all high-level competitions now held on artificial courses.
Three-time kayak slalom Olympian Scott Shipley, who is now a mechanical engineer, designed all three whitewater parks.
“It was something I wanted to bring to America,” Shipley said. “It’s a whole recreational thing where it’s not just that 1%, but also church groups and school groups and family and friends coming out to enjoy whitewater where they are.”
Bringing broader visibility to paddle sports
Jedediah Hinkley, competition director for the American Canoe Association, made a half-dozen trips to the venue to make sure it was ready for the Olympic trials. He said his group and Montgomery share a goal of “creating access to a sport that a lot of people around here have not historically had access to.”
Even with the new venue, not everyone in Montgomery is ready to pick up a paddle. Nick Riggins, who watched the events with his sister Cindy, said that when he first heard about the city investing in a whitewater park near downtown he “thought it was a hoax.”
Still, he said, he was glad the facility was open.