Published: September 16, 2006 09:09 pm         

Seven-time Gauley winner plans to return

Andrew McEwan was a 17-year-old high school senior the first time he competed in the Animal Upper Gauley Race.

Roger Zbel, meanwhile, was an experienced wildwater kayak racer. Not only that, he had won the first four Animal Upper Gauley events. Race director Donnie Hudspeth recalled one year during Zbel’s dominance when a U.S. Olympic slalom paddler arrived at the registration table, saw Zbel’s name and returned to his car and left.

So what happened on that September day in 1997?

McEwan won, beating Zbel by 24 seconds in the 9-mile downriver race.

“I had raced Roger before (on different rivers), but had never beaten him,” McEwan said. “I was totally shocked.

“I had meant to race it (the Upper Gauley) before, but I had school and couldn’t really get off, didn’t have a car. I finally got there my senior year. That was the first time, but I had been training quite a bit that year.”

McEwan went on to win the next five Animal Upper Gauley events. He missed the 2003 race while training in California in an unsuccessful bid to make the 2004 U.S. Olympic flatwater sprint team, then returned and won the 2004 race, his seventh victory in the event. He also missed last year’s race while on an expedition in Kyrgystan, once part of the Soviet Union.

Now, the Germantown, Md., native plans to return for the 14th annual Animal Upper Gauley, set for Monday, Sept. 25. The race begins just below Summersville Dam and ends at Sweet’s Falls, the last of five major rapids on the course.

“The race, it seems the whole thing is put on so well,” McEwan said. “It’s really beautiful, the scenery out there. And although there are other boats out there, it’s like you’re paddling by yourself for 45 minutes on some of the best whitewater out there.

“And the scene at the end, with everyone hanging out on the big rock watching people come through, is a lot of fun. It’s largely thanks to Donnie organizing it so well that it comes off so well.”

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McEwan, now 26, is a three-time national wildwater champion and a veteran of nine international competitions against Europeans who train and race for a living.

Earlier this year, he was the top finisher in the U.S. team trials and competed in the World Championships in the Czech Republic and in five World Cup races in Italy and Austria. His best finish was 12th in a World Cup race in Mezzanna, Italy.

But he says his days as a competitor on the international level are over.

“I’ve been doing it for so long, I want to try something else,” he said.

He still plans to compete in select domestic events like the Animal Upper Gauley and the Upper Yough Race in western Maryland, which he won earlier this summer over friend and fellow world-class paddler Geoff Calhoun of Bethesda, Md., who suffered a dislocated shoulder Sept. 5 on a creek in Virginia, apparently putting him on the sideline for the Gauley race, which he won last year.

McEwan has been virtually unbeatable over the years in distance races of 3 miles and longer.

“I think I have some natural endurance, and it helps to start training young,” he said. “When you start in your mid-20s, it’s hard. Your body doesn’t adapt.

“I’m not as strong in the (shorter) sprint races. Geoff beats me pretty handily in the sprints.”

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In 2002, McEwan and another world-class paddler, Middy Tilghman, took part in an expedition to the Canadian Arctic. But it was the one three years later to Kyrgystan they’ll probably remember more.

Along with Simon Beardmore, McEwan said, “we ran a river that flowed into China. We were out for about a week on the river. It was really tough and intimidating, but a lot of fun.”

He continued, “We were out in the middle of nowhere and finished the trip in China, which was not so copacetic with the Chinese (government). We didn’t blend in so well, it turns out. They held us for a week. At first, they were worried we were with some sort of minority group, but then they figured out we were just three hapless sportsmen and they eventually sent us back to Kyrgystan.”

The atmosphere on the Upper Gauley promises to be much more friendly. With seven races — and seven victories — under his belt, McEwan certainly knows the river.

“You try to make up as much time as you can in the easy rapids and flatwater, then hang on the best you can in the big rapids and avoid the big mistakes,” he said.

As his record in the Animal Upper Gauley shows, mistakes have been few and far between.