Seth Ashworth | Sportscene - Whitewater kayaking is growing.  It is evolving like a glass of spilled water at the dinner table.  As the water runs off in many different directions, so has the sport.  Achievements are being made across a wide range of areas and the Rider of the Year awards aims to highlight and celebrate those achievements.  

So what is Rider of the Year (ROTY) you ask? Well ROTY was set up late 2009 by Patrick Camblin, brainchild of other events such as the Whitewater Grand Prix and the founder of Tribe Rider.  It was set up to showcase the best and brightest in the world of whitewater kayaking.  This started out with a fall of the  categories we see today including; Best Line, Best Drop, Best Trick, Rider of the Year (Men’s and Women’s) and Carnage (videos if people crashing/messing up in a spectacular way.  Not so much a celebration of their mistakes but an opportunity for others to learn from them).  To make the competition as diverse as possible it was designed as an online competition with entries sent in by video.  This allowed for the maximum amount of entries and the greatest amount of exposure in the wider extreme sports community.  The videos are then voted on by the AWP (Association of Whitewater Professionals), the video with the most votes in each category is the winner.

The first two ROTY awards totaled over 1 million views and even made its way into the Banff Film Festival.  Since that original competition many new categories have been added and the competition has expanded.  This year is the third ROTY awards and the tried and tested categories that came about at the inception of the awards such as Best Photographer, Best Photograph, Best online Film (Short and Long) and all of the others.  The Honey Badger award was added for ROTY II.

Patrick Camblin had this to say about the awards, its place in the whitewater community and where it is headed in the future. “Stoked to be wrapping up Rider of the Year III, this year has taken a little longer because of the Whitewater Grand Prix in Chile.  I am really happy to have had as many people involved this year as there have been and I am looking forward for Rider of the Year IV.”

More info about the awards can be found at www.rideroftheyear.org, And with results being released in the next week it is an exciting time to be a part of the ever growing and progressive whitewater kayaking community.