Yukon River Quest receiving plenty of attention in 2009

When it comes to media attention, the Yukon River Quest seems to just sell itself.

By Jon Molson on June 22, 2009 at 1:50 pm

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When it comes to media attention, the Yukon River Quest seems to just sell itself.

Over its 11-year history, the race has been covered by Canadians, Europeans, Americans, Australians and even fellow paddlers.

Its most recent moment in the sun came after an approximately six minute segment on NBC-TV’s Jeep World of Adventure Sports, broadcasted earlier in June.

The piece was made by American paddler Brad Pennington and followed his 2008 entry in the race’s solo men’s kayak category.

This was the first time the River Quest was featured on a major U.S. channel.

River Quest officials were pleased about the exposure it created, despite a couple of errors (made as a result of the rewriting process). Some of the mistakes included stating Pennington set the course record (instead of the solo men’s kayak record) and that the winning boat in 2008 was the Hatchet Lake, when it was actually Kisseynew.

It was anticipated that anywhere from one to two million people tuned into the program, giving the Yukon River Quest one of its largest T.V. audiences ever.

“That was an excellent exposure for us in the States,” said Yukon River Marathon Paddlers Association president Jean-Francois Latour. “We came out with the opinion that it was a really good piece and it should generate a lot of interest and NBC being a big network and all this, we can forgive them for the little mistakes they made.”

The River Quest is the largest canoe and kayak race in the world, running every year from from Whitehorse to Dawson City. It is approximately 740-kilometers in overall length.

This type of competition is perfect for the Jeep adventure program, which tends to focus on sporting events out of the ordinary, putting its viewers right in the action.

Latour, who has watched the program before, said it also tends to have shorter segments.

“Apparently everyone suffers from attention deficit disorder, so they don’t make it too long, but that’s the pace of the program,” he joked. “It’s always go, go, go and they show you many, many pictures in a row and the narrator is always enthusiastic.”

He said he enjoyed the segment, despite being a little disappointed about them not mentioning the race’s other categories or the River Quest’s web site.

The Yukon River Quest is no stranger to getting international media attention, especially because a large percentage of its field is made up of overseas paddlers.

In 2004, the race was featured in a reality T.V. program, aired on the BBC. The program paired an elite level paddler with somebody who had no experience whatsoever in the sport.

Starting at the beginning, it worked its way though the process of training the non-paddler, right up until the race where the two competed in a double kayak.

The show created a lot of interest, which Latour said is talked about with British participants each year.

“If the NBC report generates as much interest as the BBC did, we will be fine for the next five years with a lot of Americans,” he said. “We already have quite a few coming. We have several states represented.”

Americans are coming from many different states, including Alaska, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Illinois, Maine, Montana, Oregon, Texas, and Washington

In addition to exposure from NBC and the BBC, the CBC has also devoted had a number of feature segments about the River Quest over the years and usually sends a videographer each year.

However, one of the most critically acclaimed and well known pieces about the River Quest is a documentary called ‘The River of Life.’ The film is centred on the Paddlers Abreast voyager team, which changed the race after becoming the first voyager canoe to enter back in 2001.

The documentary was made in 2006 and since then has been shown in not just Whitehorse and Dawson City, but across Canada. Communities such as Toronto, Ottawa and Vancouver have all screened the film. The documentary has also been shown in Europe and the United States.

Latour remembers the first time he saw it when it was first shown at the Yukon Arts Centre in 2007

“That was quite something,” he said. “As a member of the board of the Quest I thought this is bigger than us, this is something. They took it to another level, another dimension.”

The piece doesn’t focus on winning at all cost, like NBC’s did, but rather follows the six women around in their quest to finish the race.

Throughout the years, the Paddlers Abreast canoe team have been made up of breast cancer survivors and supporters. The team has finished the race every year it has entered.

Linda Rapp, a member of Paddlers, said she could never see the River of Life becoming as big as it is.

“I think that we thought it was a good, positive message and that people would be interested in it, but I certainly think we were thinking more locally than globally,” she said.

Rapp has attended at least five conferences, promoting the River of Life.

“It’s pretty emotional,” she said. “I think every time we see the film we still feel the emotion of it all, but it’s even more so in a crowd of people because you pick up on all of the group’s emotions as well.”

The next screening is on July 15 in Richmond, B.C. at the new Olympic Oval.

This year’s Paddlers Abreast Voyageur Canoe team includes Rapp, Dawn Fralick, Peggy Hanifan, Cindy Gilday, Maralyn Rogers, Lynn Rice and Asa Berg.

The River Quest begins on Wednesday in Whitehorse.