I remember reading about this from Canoe & Kayak and how difficult the lip is at the top and having to recover from the auto-boof ledge to be able to tuck and pencil it. BTW, MSN is predy huge for this event... Did Bradt get MSN news coverage on his 189ft plunge because I don't remember seeing any and that is anyways the world record... I've only heard an audio interview from some radio station.

MSNBC did cover Tyler Bradt's descent, but they did it months after the boating community found out about it. I remember because for a month after the story was on MSNBC everyone at work started asking me if I knew about the new waterfall record. Since this usually happened at the end of a long night shift I kept thinking "who the hell broke Bradt's record?"

Rafa Ortiz is a great boater but he's not the most articulate guy (but you should keep in mind that English is his second language). His voiceover at the beginning of Rush Struges's new kayaking movie is borderline embarrassing:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LVT6QsRDt_M

David Foster Wallace has this great piece about the banality of athlete interviews. He's talking about tennis players, but he ultimately concludes that these interviews are ultimately unsatisfying because the moment everyone wants to hear about - taking that big shot, or in our case paddling over the lip of a big drop - is a fundamentally inarticulate moment.

The reason top athletes succeed is because they're able to turn off their conscious though processes, and focus on simply doing what needs to be done. Which is precisely why they have nothing interesting or exciting to say about it.

I thought that was a pretty cool insight.

I would love to hear the next kayaker to plug something huge and get interviewed by a network show say "I just did it for the p***y"