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Do I Agree with Michal Martikan?!

22 September 2010 | |

A few days before the 2010 Canoe Slalom World Championships in Slovenia, multiple Olympic medal winner in C1 Michal Martikan from Slovakia launched the Facebook page 'Comeback to canoe slalom'. He doesn't like what our beautiful sport is developing in to and wants to start a discussion about where we should go. So, what do I think?!

His full statement can be read on the 'Comeback to canoe slalom' Facebook page. I agree on some suggestions such as the evaluation of rule changes after one year, improvement of the calendar to reduce traveling and improve performance, split courses for men and women and the race progression idea. But what I did not find in his statement and therefore do not completely understand, is what his actual goal is with all his proposed changes. I can definitely think of a few, such as:

  1. Improve the quality of canoe slalom for athletes: This should always be our main goal. Rule changes should always benefit the athletes.
  2. Make our sport more attractive and more easy to understand for spectators.
  3. Expand our audience.
  4. Attract more people to start canoeing

In my point of view most suggestions made on the 'Comeback to canoe slalom' page will benefit the quality of our sport. Therefore these are all great suggestions, but are quite obvious. In addition, to reach other goals (such as stated above) as well, we should look at the marketing side to find opportunities to increase the numbers in our sport. What we are trying to do is no rocket science and has been done before in various other sports. So, starting with a thorough research to these cases can be a great start.

More specific suggestions from my side would be:

  1. Set up a global marketing/race committee to function as the core for al race organizations.
    This can raise and guarantee a high and constant quality of races over the whole world. By having one team it can be easier to contract European (as most races are in Europe) or global sponsors to the World Cup Series, World Championships and Continental Championships. This team can be accompanied by the local team to add local knowledge, sponsors, partners and so on. Moreover such a team can help small country's organize World Cups as this will make racing more diverse.
  2. Start a test with organizing races on week days. 'Competition' with other big events is most likely to be smaler so it's easier to get media coverage on TV, news papers, et cetera.
  3. As the ICF, create great coverage of all big events and directly spread this to all broadcasters all over the world for FREE.
  4. Improve the race live feed with higher quality broadcasting and athlete interviews. This makes it more interesting and more attractive for sponsors.
  5. Make canoe slalom more understandable
    For someone who is watching for the first time it should be understandable within a moment. Live results, split times and animations explaining penalties. This should be available at site on competition venues, on internet and TV.

The great benefit we have is that canoe slalom is a highly attractive sport. It's one of the most valued Olympic sports to watch and thereby a major selling point. Our challenge will be to sell it in the right way! 


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