The World Paddle Awards’ value for our sport

Luca Homonnai (2015 Sports Junior) and Rene Holten Poulsen (2015 Sportsman) at the awards ceremony in Barcelona.

By Bill Endicott, winner of the Lifetime Achievement award.

The primary benefit of World Paddle Awards (WPA) is the international recognition of outstanding achievements in paddlesports. We really need that to promote our sport and with WPA’s connections to TV and social media, we now have a great vehicle for doing it.

But there’s another aspect of WPA that I want to talk about and that’s the potential for networking.

Basically, I see WPA as being sort of like the United Nations of paddlesports, but a much closer-knit group and without all the politics.

There’s a lot of difference between going through the formal, hierarchical, nationalistic, and bureaucratic international sports governing bodies for networking and going through WPA.

WPA is a body of like-minded people, chosen by their peers on the basis of great achievement and great contribution to the sport and there is consequently a much closer bond there.

Here’s something else: cross-pollination across disciplines.

"Although I’ve been in the sport of canoeing and kayaking

for almost 50 years, I didn’t realize until associating with WPA

how many people in paddlesports I didn’t know!"

While I’ve been active in slalom, wildwater and sprint, those are only 3 of the 15 paddlesport branches. Now through WPA, I have a way of going to all the others and learning from them.

The 2014 World Paddle Awards in Augsburg, Germany.

So, now is the time when all sorts of things are possible, things that may be difficult with other organizations:

• We could have cross-paddlesport conferences where we discuss what could be done to advance our sport around the world.  An idea I’ve had along those lines is promoting arm and upper body exercise as a way to physical fitness either in combination with or in place of leg-based work such as running or cycling.
• We could arrange attention-grabbing races in iconic visual settings, such as at France’s Loire Valley Castles, Chenonceau or Blois, or a marathon kayak race around Venice, or other such picturesque places.
• In the winter we could organize kayak (and even canoe) ergometer races via the internet.  Athletes from many countries could gather at unusual locations such as famous hotel ball rooms to compete and their scores would be posted on line in real time.  Maybe there would also be a running commentary.

In sum, we now have this fantastic vehicle [WPA] for doing all sorts of fun things that weren’t really possible before. These can be used to connect people while at the same time getting unprecedented media attention for our great sport!

Also read: "For Lifetime Achievement winner Bill Endicott WPA is about (new) friends"