#ICFplattling - The International Canoe Federation Freestyle Kayak World Championships is a time to showcase the sport and look toward its future.
Early in the week, the ICF Executive Committee enjoyed catching the action at the freestyle competition during their two-day meeting.

Future and potential World Championship organizers also came to town. USA Canoe Kayak Executive Director Joe Jacobi and Sutton Bacon and Lee Leibfarth of Nantahala Outdoor Center came to check out the action in Plattling since they will be hosting the World Championships in 2013 at their facility in North Carolina.
Also visiting Worlds with an eye toward a possible bid to host a future World Championship were representatives from Kongsberg, Norway and Sort, Spain.

ICF Freestyle Kayak Committee Chair Lluis Rabaneda said he is encouraged by the growing interest in freestyle both within the ICF and as demonstrated by possible World Championship hosts. “As we’ve seen in Thun, Switzerland in 2009 and again here this year, freestyle kayaking is a good investment for cities,” Rabaneda said. “It’s great to see event organizers thinking so far ahead. It hasn’t always been that way. Sometimes events were chosen just a year in advance, but now we’re awarding bids two years out and soon I hope we’ll be planning even further ahead.”

This year’s event attracted some 225 athletes from nearly 30 countries plus their friends and families not to mention dozens of event officials, media, the support staff needed to run a World Championship as well as sponsors, exhibitors and a variety of festival concessions.

Like all major international sporting competitions, the freestyle kayak world championship generates hundreds of thousands of media impressions. This year’s Worlds is being streamed live on the Internet attracting thousands of viewers daily. German news and paddlesports media are here in force, taking photographs, videos and filing reports about the event. Virtually all the athletes are posting daily blogs, photos and videos of their experiences online and on Facebook from the time they arrive, sometimes several weeks in advance, through the end of the competition.

Rabaneda explained that the hope is that one day freestyle kayaking will become an Olympic discipline but until then, World Championships are the highest level of competition.

Action concludes today, Saturday, at the ICF Freestyle Kayak World Championships with finals in all divisions. Awards and closing ceremonies begin tonight at 7 p.m.