Whitewater Festival brings paddlers to Wild Mile

The 34th annual Whitewater Festival returned to its usual tradition of taking place in the rain last weekend after a fluke sunny Memorial Day weekend last year, but that didn't keep people from throwing on their ran gear and watching the races, which had more than double the number of competitors participate than last year.

Missoula's Todd Richey was the overall winner of the event. Richey placed first in the upper slalom race, took second in his heat of the boatercross and finished ninth in the down river race.

Each boater is timed in every race and places are established in the individual race. Then each of the boaters' times are added together for a combined time which is then ranked among all of the other boaters' times.

In the slalom race, participants have a five-second penalty added if they hit a gate and a 50-second penalty if they miss the gate all together.

Jonny Meyers, who is from Bigfork but is currently living in Colorado while he finishes his final semester at Western State College, took second place overall in the competition.

He placed second in the down river, fourth in the upper slalom and fifth in the boater cross. Last fall Meyers competed on the U.S. kayaking team in the World Freestyle competition in Switzerland and placed sixth.

Months later he was sidelined from the sport after a snowboarding accident in which he broke both wrists and five vertebrae in his spine. Last month he returned to competition and won the Boatercross Championships at the Alt Games in Reno, Nevada.

David Meyers, Jonny's younger brother placed sixth overall after taking first in the down river, second in his heat of the boatercross and 14th in the upper slalom. This year marked the first time that the Meyers brothers both competed in the Whitewater Festival together (Read more about the Meyers brothers in next week's Bigfork Eagle).

Jake Hall had the third best combined time. He took second in the upper slalom, sixth in the down river and seventh in the boater cross.

Less-experienced paddlers can compete in the beginner slalom, which takes places on the less rough part of the river just above the one-lane bridge.

Eric Walberg won that race in 1:58 and Bigfork's Drew Hollinger was second in 2:03. Jesse Rumsey was third with a time of 2:27.

Despite cold temperatures Sunday morning, the triathlon still attracted a fair number of participants.

Kayleen Uibel was the overall winner among the women. She completed the four-mile paddle, 14-mile bike ride and four-mile run in 1:53.33. Lynette VanAken was second with a time of 2:04.55. Leslie Berg was third in 2:30.05.

Among the men, Steve Muller took first in 1:47.33, Leif Castren was second in 1:48.44 and Dan Block was third in 1:50.41.

There were only two female teams and three mixed-gender teams entered in the race. Team Yellow won between the two women's teams in 2:20:45 and The Wave team won among the mixed teams in 1:58.45.