payette brewing ambassador, Hayden Voorhees, makes the top ten in austria class v kayak competition
Hayden Voorhees, a professional whitewater kayaker and a part of Payette Brewing’s Senses Heightened crew, traveled to compete in the OETZ Trophy, located in Austria. Throughout the competition and travels, Hayden was able to share his experience, giving US an inside look into the sport.
Oetz Trophy is an extreme class V kayaking race where 180 male and female kayakers from around the world come to compete at the highest of levels. The qualifying round took place on the bottom half of the Wellerbruke rapids and continued down about 200 yards to the finish line. The top 80 men and 12 females continued on to the Quarter Finals the following day. One at a time, each competitor slid off the ramp and raced 60 seconds of class V whitewater till reaching the finish line. Based on these results, the men racers were cut from 80 to 30 who would advance to the Semifinals. The Semifinal is unique compared to other extreme races because racers were matched up in a head to head time trial race. The fastest racer from the qualifier faced the 30th place, the second place and 29th place race, and so on. The winner of these matchups would move on to the final round of the race. There were also three lucky losers who lost their matchup, but still had better times than the rest of the losers and were able to advance. This led to a final heat of 18 men and 6 women. In the Super Final everyone had one chance to take home the title.
On race day one, I started the day with a pretzel bun and some eggs. I then headed out to the course before the race to prepare for the intense day ahead. As I sat by the river and visualized my lines I felt confident that I was going to do well in the first round. Once the Oetz trophy kicked off I waited patiently for my turn to go and cheered on both my brothers and friends. As my start time got closer, I geared up and carried my boat to the starting line. 3… 2… 1… GO! I pushed off the starting platform and everything went as I had visualized. With only a couple of minor mistakes I came sprinting through the finish line with a smile on my face knowing I had a great run. Throughout the day I remained at the top of the leader board and advanced to the next round in 6th place.
“. . . I came sprinting through the finish line with a smile on my face knowing I had a great run. Throughout the day I remained at the top of the leader board and advanced to the next round in 6th place. ”
Saturday was a big day since the final three rounds were all back to back. Quarterfinals started first thing in the morning and because the start list was in reverse order from the qualifier I had plenty of time to watch. When it was my turn, I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. Then pushed off and slid down the ramp straight into the rapid. My goal was to stay smooth and fast from top to bottom. I was having a super fast run and when I got to the finish line, I was thrilled to see I clocked the fastest time of the round so far. With five more racers to go I got bumped down to the 3rd place going into the semi finals and matched up against the 28th place.
Unfortunately for me, I was matched up with the reigning silver medalist from the previous year. If I would've had a race run like my first then I would have been stoked, but that didn't happen. I ended up getting off line on a couple moves and tagged a few rocks which cost me at least 2 seconds which led to me losing my matchup. All I could do from there was to hope I could still make it to the next round as a lucky loser. I was on the bubble up until the very last match up. With one more person to go they slid down the ramp and were having a good run until they made it to the last drop and missed a crucial stroke. He flipped over and that put me into the finals!
After a 30 minute break I was getting ready for my final run of the competition. Visualization is extremely important to me and when I was thinking of what I wanted to do, it was exactly what happened in my first run. When My turn came I wanted to make sure to leave it all on the river. At the start of my final run, I sprinted as hard as I could, but that caused me to make a few mistakes. Since it was such a long day, fatigue got to me and I wasn't able to piece everything together. I quickly started to fall down the ranks and by the time the final racer finished I landed in 7th place. My first time at the Oetz Trophy was a major success! I was happy to leave with a top 10 finish and made lifelong memories with my family and friends. I would like to thank Payette Brewing for supporting all of my kayaking endeavors. I can’t wait to see what 2023 brings!