In 1933, Dr. Oscar F La Palma and Enrique Rietchart, paddled the whole Río Negro (Spanish for Black River) from Bariloche to Viedma in a sailcloth kayak, crossing the Argentinian Patagonia. In 1964 a few sportsmen remembered this adventure and created a regatta connecting Neuquén and Viedma. The Río Negro Regatta was born and nowadays, 48 years later, it’s still considered the longest and toughest marathon river competition in the world: 7 days covering a whole distance of 277 km.

All along these years, many paddlers have set their name into canoeing history by winning this epic race, but now are Néstor Pinta and Martín Mozzicafredo who are asking for a place above them all. Last January 14th they have stepped on top of the podium for the 11th time, ten out of them as a couple.

Under the strong sun of the austral summer, 112 boats with 188 paddlers started at Senillosa (Neuquén) facing these seven single marathons in a row. Some of them, mostly Argentinian but also coming from Chile, Brazil or Great Britain, had the objective of trying to avoid a new Pinta – Mozzicafredo absolute victory. On the other hand, in the Open K1 category, there was no clear favourite, after the last minute cancellation of the Spanish Federico Vega (ICF Marathon World Series 2011 winner), who wanted to start 2012 leading again in this rank. Also with the pass of Fernando Percaz, last K1 winner, to the K2 category, the Singles looked an open field for new competitors to set their name in the international field by being the first leaders of the Marathon World Series this year.

The first stage already showed what would be the standard of the race: Pinta – Mozzicafredo leading a bunch of four or five boats, with the Scalesi Brothers, Percaz – Soto and Orellana – di Renzo, waiting for a gap to put their bow in front. Day after day, the race followed the script, even if the aspiring boats were working together to leave Pinta and Mozzicafredo behind. The favorites always reserved a final punch to their jaws by winning closed sprints or striking hard on the compulsory portages, which were introduced in this race for the first time.

As the new portages were happily received by the crowd and gave much more spectacularity to the some of the stages, the feeling was not the same with another novelty introduced this year: a final turn to face the finish line upstream. This new finish had an incident  in two of the stages, when the strong stream of the river broke the buoy string and it went down the river with no control. The leading kayaks where then looking for an non-existant turn.  Then the officials decided to finish the stage in the first pass downstream, but with no former advice to the paddlers, surprisingly found that the race was over. Although everybody agreed to mark this finish system as something to improve for next edition, the impact on the results was not significant, with Pinta and Mozzicafredo scratching time everyday to their rivals, who were also fighting for the second place and taking time off to each other day after day, then making a wider gap with the leaders.

In K1, the Argentina National Sprint Team member and medalist at the Panamerican Games Daniel Dal-Bo showed from the first stage an impressive strength, leading comfortably on his own the race and showing his willing to achieve his first Río Negro title. But in such long races nobody can ever relax and Dal-Bo found his particular obstacle in the third stage, the longest one of the regatta, when he broke the rudder system at the very beginning of the day. After a quick repair he could make at the bank of the river, a tough paddling waited to finish the stage with a loss of 16 minutes, which made him drop significantly in the overall standings. His main rivals for the title, Diego Ortega and Jonathan Calvo, then saw themselves leading the overall standings, but every single day looking backwards for a spectacular Daniel Dal-Bo, who was showing his determination to claim the final victory.

With a day off after the third stage, the four remaining days were a bit shorter, under two hours for the first boat, but the arms started to feel heavy for all the contestants. The K2 competition seemed like a huge déjà vu. Pinta and Mozzicafredo never gave a chance to any other couple and continued growing their difference day after day, with a dream arrival to the last finish line in Viedma, surrounded by a large crowd who recognised in them the absolute kings of the Río Negro in their 11th victory. They stopped the chronometer in 14h10’57”, taking more than six minutes over Santiago Scalesi and Juan Scalesi, second, and Fernando Percaz and Maximiliano Soto, who completed the podium only 49” ahead of Orellana and di Renzo, finally out of the medals.

But if the K2 race was exciting, maybe it’s difficult to find a word for the K1 finish stage. With Daniel Dal-Bo taking off a couple of minutes everyday from Ortega and Calvo advantage in the overall standings, he started the final day with the need of arriving to Viedma with another two and a half minutes of advantage. After a superb paddling, he managed to get to the finish line in 10th overall position of the stage and heading off his rivals by 5 minutes, twice the time he needed. If we were talking of Néstor Pinta and Martín Mozzicafredo as kings, Daniel Dal-Bo definitely deserved for himself the title of Prince of Río Negro. His outstanding performance also gives him the lead so far in the ICF Marathon World Series 2012, which will have continuity at the Dusi Unlimited, to celebrate in South Africa next month. Jonathan Calvo and Diego Ortega escorted him on the final podium.