‘NASCAR or Rock ’Em Sock ’Em Robots’: Welcome to Olympic kayak cross

PARIS — With boats slamming into each other, athletes twirling underwater and a mad dash to the finish line, kayak cross at the Paris Games promises to offer a wholly unique viewing experience with some familiar elements. Pick your comparison:

Bumper cars - a little.

“American Gladiators” - less so.

Snowboard cross - for sure.

“There’s definitely a little component of NASCAR or Rock ‘Em Sock ‘Em Robots,” said Eric Giddens, NBC’s canoe analyst for the past four Olympics. “There’s going to be crashes and burns, and things will change rapidly.”

Beginning with Friday’s time trials, the event is making its debut on the Paris program and will be unlike other canoe disciplines - and unlike anything else at the Olympics, really. For paddlers in the boat, there are no assigned lanes, and no one’s racing against the clock. First to the bottom wins, which sounds simple, but a lot can happen between the start and the finish.

“It’s really great for spectators to watch because it’s so easy to simply root for them; you see them racing directly next to each other,” said Evy Leibfarth, the American paddler who has already bagged a bronze medal in the canoe slalom single in Paris. “I adore the traditional slalom, but I definitely see the appeal of being able to watch and see very easily who’s winning.”

The event will be an adventure for paddlers and a thrill ride for viewers, too. Anyone who has seen snowboard cross in the Winter Olympics will grasp the basics, but there are some twists that will inject some volatility into every race.

“You know, one of the fun things about combat sports is the unpredictability of opponent,” said Casey Eichfeld, a four-time Olympic paddler. “Well, whitewater is also unpredictable, so now we’re adding these two unpredictable things together.”

At the start, all four boats are situated on an electronic hydraulic ramp about six feet above the water, waiting in anticipation. When the starting gun fires, the ramp tilts forward and they’re all dropped abruptly onto the rushing whitewater below. That’s where the sprint - and chaos - begins.

With no assigned lanes, the boats jostle for position as they try to navigate what amounts to an aquatic obstacle course, paddling through both downstream and upstream gates.

Along the way, they’re not allowed to rattle oars, but there’s no such restrictions on the kayaks. So there will be boat taps, bumps and collisions. Someone will get knocked off course. Others will get pushed and pinched and thwarted.

“We have to keep our hands on the paddles at all times,” Eichfeld said. “No throwing punches, no throwing elbows. We’re not boxing while we’re out there.”

Just to make it more interesting, at one point, every paddler must perform a mandatory kayak roll - spinning their boat into and out of the water. That means the paddler must hold his or her breath as they roll underwater, return to an upright position and continue racing. Simple, right?

The first two racers across the finish line advance in the tournament. The other two go home. Beginning Saturday, three dozen paddlers will try to race their way through the bracket, aiming to be one of four boats in Monday’s medals race.

“Most Olympic sports are some classic things that we think of - track and field, swimming. This will be a little bit like the Olympics and X-Games sort of mixed together,” Giddens said.

Giddens paddled in the 1996 Olympics. He never had a chance to race in kayak cross because it’s a relatively new discipline. Canoe slalom debuted at the 1972 Summer Games, disappeared for 20 years and has been on the Olympic program steadily since 1992. Kayak cross didn’t start as a World Cup event until 2015 and has slowly grown in popularity and participation.

Leibfarth, 20, first raced cross in 2018 and said by 2020, most slalom paddlers were entering the cross event too. It’s a slightly different skill-set and definitely a different mentality, she said - from the start on the elevated ramp to the head-to-head racing to the probability of contact along the way.

“In slalom, you have complete control,” said Leibfarth, who’s competing in her second Olympics. “It’s your race. You visualize every single stroke that you’re going to do before it, and it all comes down to you.

“In cross,” she continued, “you have no idea where the other people are going to go. … It’s just a lot more to think about, a lot more reacting as opposed to planning.”

With any new discipline, there’s a learning curve for the viewer - and sometimes the athletes, too. Eichfeld came to Paris to race the slalom, in which he finished 16th in the semifinals earlier this week and failed to advance. But the U.S. team also had qualified a spot in the kayak cross. Eichfeld has never actually raced cross before, but he couldn’t pass up another shot at an Olympic medal.

“I’ve been watching it since the very beginning. It’s fun to watch, but it wasn’t something I had considered too much, maybe not my primary skill-set,” he said. “But here, it’s part of the Olympic Games. I was like, ‘Why not? I’m here. Let’s have some fun.’”

The part he’s most unsure of? That’s easy: the six-foot ramp at the start.

“I don’t generally mind heights. I’ll go on ride roller-coasters all day,” Eichfeld said. “But there’s something about being up there in a kayak makes me a little nervous.”