Minden to host Pan Am kayak races
Posted By Chad Ingram and Jenn Watt
Updated 9 months ago
The 2015 Pan Am Games are coming to Minden.
Friday the games committee announced Toronto would be the host of the athletic championships for all of the Americas, beating out Bogota, Colombia and Lima, Peru, with the Minden Whitewater Preserve as its site for kayaking events.
"I think it's huge," said Claudia Van Wijk of Whitewater Ontario, who will be heading up the committee overseeing the games' whitewater events. "It's putting Minden on the map."
While Van Wijk said whitewater kayaking is still one of the games' "fringe," sports, she estimates about 100 world-class kayakers will make their way to Minden to compete in the kayak slalom.
Kayaking doesn't usually draw as large a crowd as the games' other sports, Van Wijk said, but it is one of the most exciting to watch on television and Minden would certainly be receiving some extensive media coverage during the event.
The whitewater preserve itself, located on Horseshoe Lake Road, should not experience any negative environmental impacts as a result of the athletes and spectators that will visit the site in the summer of 2015, Van Wijk said.
"It is a leave-no-trace, natural sport and we would like to keep it that way," she said, adding that Whitewater Ontario will be providing recycling and garbage cans and portable washrooms during the two-day event, as well as working closely with the township of Minden Hills to ensure that environmental damage is nil.
Van Wijk said the Minden site was chosen since it is the closest whitewater course to Toronto, but said it also unique since it provides Class 4 or 5 rapids that are completely natural.
"That is very hard to find," she said.
Rapids are rated on a scale of Class 1 to Class 6, the former being a moving current and the latter being impassible water, or basically a waterfall.
Minden's whitewater preserve has been considered as an international site before, when Toronto put together its 2008 Olympics bid.
Jim Tayler, president of Whitewater Ontario, which runs the preserve, told the Times earlier this year that the river is "a stretch of water that has something for everyone. The upper part can be a challenge for slalom racers but the bigger the challenge the more fun they have. It's big water and their technical and physical skills are tested."
Concerns were raised during the Olympics bid about whether the preserve could handle Olympics-sized crowds, and although those concerns still persist, the crowds will likely be smaller for these games.
Still, new infrastructure around the Gull River will have to be built to accommodate the athletes and spectators including a parking lot, stands and a river-side trail.
Earlier this year, Van Wijk told the Times that any upgrades done will have a cost to the local community.
"The catch is that they [the Pan Am Games] cover 56 per cent of venue costs – capital expenditures needed to hold the Pan Ams. The 44 per cent would need to come from private sources and from the community," she said.
