8-year champs beaten on Au Sable
July 26, 2004
BY ERIC SHARP
FREE PRESS OUTDOORS WRITER
OSCODA -- For nearly 15 hours, through temperatures in the 30s and dense fog, Andrew Triebold and Steve Lajoie matched Serge Corbin and Jeff Kolka stroke for stroke until the teams were only 200 yards from the end of the 120-mile Weyerhaeuser Au Sable River Canoe Marathon.
Then after some 60,000 paddle strokes, Kolka made a tiny error on 60,001. Paddling furiously, Triebold and Lajoie squirted ahead to win the 57th annual race by 13 seconds and end Kolka and Corbin's eight-year winning streak.
"I made a mistake," Kolka said. "I'm not saying we would have won that final sprint anyway, but what I did stopped any chance we had at it."
Triebold, a Spring Arbor resident who at 28 is the same age as his paddling partner from Mirabel, Quebec, said, "We were in the same situation last year, and we let it get away from us. This year, we decided that that wouldn't happen again.
"They went to move by us and kind of spun out the canoe. That gave us a lead of about two boat lengths, and by the time they got themselves sorted out, we were gone."
Kolka, 45, from Grayling, said he and Corbin, 47, from St. Boniface, Quebec, were riding on a wake from the other canoe, enjoying a free energy lift like cyclists do with the drafting technique.
"We started to make our move, and I took the canoe away from Serge. I thought he wanted to go over that way, and we kind of fell off the wake," Kolka said.
Corbin, who has won this event 16 times with various partners, said, "When that happened, we almost tipped over, and we had to stop paddling. There was no way we could catch them again in the time left. They were just too fast."
Triebold and Lajoie finished in 14 hours, 59 minutes, 46 seconds, more than an hour off the record of 13.58:08 set by Corbin and Solomon Carriere in 1994.
They earned $5,000 for the victory in an event that had a total purse of $50,000.
Kolka and Corbin were second in 14:59:59, and Rick Joy of Silverwood and Louis Berthiaume of Berthierville, Quebec, were third in 15:07:08.
Fifty-nine teams started the race in Grayling at 9 p.m. Saturday, running three blocks through town in a Le Mans start before dumping the boats into the Au Sable at Ray's Canoe Livery.
Fourteen teams dropped out during the night, some because of injury or illness, some because they fell behind cutoff times at the 15 checkpoints, and a few who suffered from hypothermia as temperatures along the river dropped as low as 34 degrees.
"It was very cold. I couldn't keep my feet warm," said Lajoie. "When we got the portage at Loud Dam, I fell on my face when I was running because I couldn't feel my feet."
Lajoie said when the teams got to Foote Dam, the final portage, "I felt better, like I had something left for a sprint at the finish. But I'll tell you honestly, I couldn't have gone one more second."
Among the finishers were Jeff Jannish, 41, of Whittemore and his daughter Theresa, 15, the youngest competitor ever to complete the race. They were 45th in 18:36:41.
Contact ERIC SHARP at 313-222-2511 or
esharp@freepress.com.
