William T. Endicott

6537 Broad Street

Bethesda, MD 20816

April 6, 2008

To the city of Raleigh, North Carolina:

I am writing in support of creating a full-length, multiple feature slalom course on the Neuse River.

I have been associated with whitewater canoeing and kayaking for 38 years now, first as a athlete, then as coach of the US team that won gold and bronze medals at the Barcelona Olympics, and as manager of the same team when it won a silver at Athens.  I was also the NBC TV Color Commentator for the canoeing and kayaking events at the Atlanta Olympics in 1996.

I also helped design the venue for the Atlanta Games, which included testifying before Congress to get money for it, and I was the first President of the World Cup in our sport, in which position I had a chance to scrutinize most of the top venues in the world as to their suitability for hosting big slalom events.

And most recently I have been a consultant to the Chinese Canoeing Association to help them design the venue for the Beijing Olympics. 

Because of all these experiences, I believe that the development of the Falls Whitewater Park offers the Raleigh area a great opportunity.   With the right design, this park would offer an alternative form of recreation not currently found in the region.   If done right it would draw in people who want to learn the sport, provide a great training ground for paddlers, and be a venue for US National Championships, World Cup races, and possibly even a World Championships. These and other events would attract both youth and adults and bring money into the local economy as happened with the course created for the Atlanta Olympics on the Ocoee River, for example.

This whitewater park would not only serve paddlers but would draw the general public to picnic, walk in the park and dangle their feet in the river.   In that regard, it could be like the course in Augsburg, Germany, that was built for the 1972 Olympics and has since become a great family destination.

The course could also give people a reason to care about and want to protect the Neuse River.  I saw this happen with the course created in South Bend, Indiana, for example.

But how to “do it right?”  I think there is great danger in just having a short, one-rapid course, because people will get tired of that pretty quickly, and it won’t be the hook you really need to draw people and money to it.  A single rapid just would not provide the same on-going opportunity for recreation and safety training as a course with multiple rapids would. 

So, I would say that if you are going to do this, you want to create the kind of course that will cause a real “buzz’ in the whitewater community and get prominent members of that community to endorse it.  And I think a longer course with more features is what that will take. 

I can’t tell you enough how much my association with this sport has enriched my life.  It’s been the ride of a lifetime, and I think it could be for people in Raleigh, too.  Besides taking me to the Olympics five times, it’s taken me to 68 countries and brought people from many of those countries here to events in the US, thus helping me to make friends all over the world.

To this day, for example, I still hear from people in Russia who enjoyed the “home stay” program we put together to house and feed athletes coming to World Cup events in the Mid West in the 1980s. And just this past summer we did something similar for racers from Iran competing on the new course on top of Wisp Mountain in western Maryland.

So, for all these reasons I hope you will give every possible consideration to supporting the efforts of the Falls Whitewater Park Citizen’s Committee to build a really top whitewater course in Raleigh.

Sincerely,

Bill Endicott