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DECEMBER 2017 SAW THE RETURN OF
the Asahan River Festival to North Sumatra
for the first time in well over a decade. Now
called the Toba Caldera Championships, a new
generation of whitewater kayakers and rafters
took to the 22-km course, on a river emptying
from an ancient caldera formed during a
supersized volcanic eruption 74,000 years ago.
The racing started with daily individual
rafting events – Sprint, Head to Head, Down
River and Slalom – on the bridge-to-bridge
section of the Class 3+ water. Competition was
intense, with teams including Phoenix Rafting
and Ph-uk Ricketts consistently placing well
across all four days.Without a doubt the highlights were the
extreme kayak events, drawing an international
field of competitors to Northern Sumatra.
Blazing a trail was the Down River Sprint,
arguably one of the best white water kayak races
in the world, seeing paddlers going solo against
the clock for an average 12 minutes of constant
Class 3-5 whitewater. The ‘Dam to Bridge’ and
‘Rabbit Hole to Never Never Land’ sections force
competitors to pick the perfect line over 5km
of water, paddling as hard as possible in f latter
water for their chance on the podium. The entire
top 10 finished within one minute of each other,
with Charlie Nguyen from France claiming first
in 10 minutes 43 seconds, closely followed byMike Dawson from New Zealand and Italy’s
Michele Ramazza in third.
On the second day, victory in the Slalom
race – a crowd pleaser with each competitor
launching themselves down a near-vertical ramp
from the audience to the middle of the Asahan
River – went to Ramazza, followed by Dawson
this time. But the New Zealander wasn’t done.
At the Boater Cross, four rivals launched at the
same time down the ramp and battled it out
head-to-head, with Dawson winning to take the
overall crown.
The whole event was completed with a
final party and a sightseeing trip around Toba
Caldera itself.INDONESIA WHITEWATERReturn to Asahan
— March/April 2018