Summer Olympics 2000 Shipley gets two-point cut

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Wednesday, September 20
Shipley gets two-point cut
Associated Press

PENRITH, Australia -- A two-point penalty for touching a gate on his first run kept nine-time U.S. champion kayaker Scott Shipley from winning his first Olympic medal Wednesday.

Shipley, a Seattle-area native who once lived in a treehouse when money was tight, finished fifth with a score of 226.67. Without the infraction, he would have finished ahead of Italy's Pierpaolo Ferrazzi, who took third with 225.03.

Shipley, the runner-up at the world championships in 1995, '97 and '99, was in the lead after his second run, but four of the remaining five challengers passed him.

Shipley can take solace in having his best performance in three Olympics. He was 12th in Atlanta and 27th in Barcelona.

"Everything is acceptable," Shipley said Tuesday after qualifying fifth. "I have some personal goals, but I'm not going to go home disappointed either way."

Thomas Schmidt of Germany won the gold with a score of 217.25. Another German, Oliver Fix, won in '96.

Reigning world champion and gold-medal favorite Paul Ratcliffe of Britain got the silver.

In the two-man canoe finals Wednesday, Slovakian brothers Pavel and Peter Hochschorner took the gold by posting the faster times on each of their two runs, although they had a 2-point penalty on the first run. Their score of 237.74 points was still six ahead of the field.

Krzyzstof Kolomanski and Michal Staniszewski of Poland, the runners-up at last year's world championships, took silver, and the bronze went to Marek Jiras and Tomas Mader of the Czech Republic, the reigning world champs.

The Atlanta gold medalist team of Franck Adisson and Wilfrid Forgues of France were seventh of eight after taking 52 points in penalties on their final run.

Several years ago, whitewater events were dropped from the schedule for Sydney because organizers were reluctant to build the venue.

Shipley was practicing one dark morning when he realized that no matter how hard he worked, it wouldn't result in an Olympic medal. He considered giving up the sport.

"Then I sat there for a minute and said, `Aaah, who cares,"' he said. "I just never felt like it was time to stop yet."

He tried quitting one other time.

"I wanted to see what it was like for a month," said Shipley, who now lives in Atlanta. "Then I added it up and I'd paddled like 21 times, so I knew I wasn't very good at that."

It's hard to imagine he was surprised that he couldn't shake the slalom bug. After all, the guy was so dedicated to breaking into kayak racing that he lived in a trailer, a tent and his car. He even spent a winter in a treehouse.

"When I was in juniors, there wasn't much funding," said Shipley, who is staying in a rented house with teammates while in Sydney. "I had like a grand to live on all winter. My friend rented this whole rafting complex, then he rented me the treehouse for $30 a month. It had no heat, no light, no power, no nothing. Just a covered shed. But there was warm water down the way."

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