Congratulations to High Fives Athlete, Jason Craig on Winning the 2014 Reno River Festival!
An excerpt from the Reno Gazette Journal:
Jason Craig, a sophomore at the University of Nevada, has two finals on Monday and is recovering from a dislocated shoulder. Yet that, and the rain, didn’t seem to keep him from defending his Reno River Festival title Saturday in the men’s freestyle kayak competition at the Truckee River Whitewater Park at Wingfield in downtown Reno.
“I really haven’t had a whole lot of time,” Craig, 20, said. “I dislocated my shoulder at World Championships in the fall and I have finals this week, and I haven’t had much training in between those two. So, I came out and didn’t have a whole lot of expectations and wanted to have fun.”
Craig, a former junior world champion who returned to the river after recovering from a broken back in 2011, competed against four other kayakers in the final round on Saturday. He scored 1,380 in his first of three rides, which would be enough to secure his championship for the second consecutive year. Each of the kayakers had three rides in the final round to attempt as many tricks 1 minute to be scored by judges.
“I was a little tired this round but I think I hit both McNastys and a loop and maybe a back loop or a Space Godzilla,” Craig said. “It’s hard to remember all of them, you’re going so fast.”
Read the full article by Regina Bradley of the Reno Gazette Journa here.
About High Fives Athlete, Jason Craig: Jason found his passion in paddling at a young age and traveled around the globe as a profession kayaker. At 16 he won the 2009 Freestyle Kayaking World Championships in Thun, Switzerland. On March 20th, 2011 while out running a 30’ waterfall he landed on a submerged rock and shattered his sacrum, burst fractured L4, L5, and suffered neurological compression and severage. Now he is working hard to hike out of the Zambezi, ski powder, boulder in Bishop, and run the high Sierra multi-day classics once again.
Learn more about Jason Craig.
