The lead story from the World Championships in Oklahoma City has to be Evy Leibfarth’s silver-medal performance in women’s kayak, where she was beaten only by Australia’s Jessica Fox, one of the greatest paddlers in the history of the sport.
Although still just 22 years old, Leibfarth has already competed in three World Championships and two Olympic Games. Her résumé includes an Olympic bronze medal in C1, and a World Championship medal in kayak cross.
But to fully appreciate what Leibfarth accomplished this week, you have to understand the depth and intensity of the competition she faced. The 2026 ICF Canoe Slalom World Championships brought 250 athletes from 50 countries to the man-made course in Oklahoma City, designed by three-time World Cup champion Scott Shipley of S20/Calibre Engineering, competing on a course that demanded an extraordinary combination of speed, precision, and patience.
The difficulty of the course was evident throughout the competition. Among the world’s top-ranked men, seven of the 30 paddlers in the semifinal missed a gate, each mistake resulting in a 50-second penalty, likely from pressing too hard. The margins separating the best are razor-thin, and several of the world’s top-ranked athletes failed to reach the finals.
Having not attended a World Championship or World Cup at this level for several years, I was struck by how dramatically the quality of paddling has advanced.
Nearly everyone can now enter and exit upstream gates in a single stroke. Their strength and power are so great that, rather than taking a wave in the chest, they launch themselves over the feature entirely. Keeping the deck of the boat dry translates directly into speed and control. The result is simultaneously more powerful and precise than anything I have seen before.
Any paddler can appreciate the challenge of catching a wave on the fly. It takes precise timing and an understanding of the water’s three-dimensional movement to put a boat onto a wave at speed. But today’s slalom paddlers have taken this skill to another level.
They are remarkably skilled at converting full downstream speed into cross-current momentum, carrying that speed onto the curl of a hydraulic to redirect the boat toward the next gate. Old-school racers will appreciate that the course design forced several full spin reverse gates, in dicey must-make moves, usually across the backside of a wave hole.
How much power is in the hole? Will it be sticky when my boat gets there, or will it be boily and surging? Where is the fastest part of the wave? How much speed can I carry into it without getting stopped? All of that has to be decided instinctively, in the midst of the boat doing a full spin upstream.
The best paddlers somehow take all of these variables into account and make it look simple. Some of this evolution is a product of the modern competition channels themselves. Unlike many of the traditional natural rivers where slalom developed, these courses often feature complex, braided currents that force paddlers to move repeatedly back and forth across the river. The water can behave less like a broad, predictable river and more like the chaotic currents found in a tight box canyon.
Thriving in the middle of all that chaos was Evy Leibfarth.
Slalom, at its core, is as much a mental discipline as a physical one. At the finish line, Leibfarth talked about nerves:
“It feels surreal,” she said. “I was really nervous paddling to the start block and I am glad because I am telling myself that I am ready. I knew that the second the start clock went zero and I started going that I would forget all about that and I would just paddle.”
That ability to turn nervousness into focus may be one of the most important skills in paddling.
Leibfarth spent part of the past Winter Olympics as a roving reporter, working for US Olympic Committee, moving among venues and observing athletes competing and handling the atmosphere. It seems that experience was well calculated preparation. She had the opportunity to watch how elite athletes handled pressure, how they prepared, and perhaps most importantly, how they learned to enjoy the experience despite the enormous stakes.
The American men’s kayak team of Michal Smolen (38th), Tyler Westfall (42nd), Kaelin Friedenson (49th) did not advance to the semifinals, but their raw speed was impressive. All three were fast enough, but each touched one gate in the heats, which kept them out of the 30-boat semifinals. It is worth noting that Friedenson finished second at this year’s North Fork Championship, one of the world’s premier extreme kayaking events.
The US kayaks were in good company, watching the finals from shore. Failing to qualify included Titouan Castryck of France. At just 21, Castryck has already become Paris Olympic silver medalist, 2025 World Champion, and World Cup overall champion, making him one of the sport’s premier talents. Also failing to go through to finals was Jiří Prskavec of Czechia Prskavec has defined the last decade of men’s slalom, winning the 2021 Tokyo Olympic K1, and the 2015 and 2019 World Championships.
USA C-1 veteran Casey Eichfeld had the 3rd fastest raw time in semis, but penalties kept him out of the final. He and teammate Bug Lokken are nearly fast enough for finals, now they just have to stay clean without penalties.
There is a curious truth about high-level competition: the people having the most fun usually seem to outperform the people who are merely trying to survive the pressure. They are competing hard, but they are also present enough to enjoy the challenge.
The standout performance of all the athletes was Spain’s Miquel Travé, who finished 6th in Men’s Kayak slalom, and won the C-1 slalom. Relatively few of the men’s kayaks go both ways, competing both C-1 and kayak. Trave exemplified how the very best paddlers manage to make paddling slalom look like the most natural thing imaginable.
Another person psyched on the action was Shipley, who got to see the world’s best tackle a course he designed.
“I felt like the event was amazing and I’m struck by the bigger context of it,” hge says. “We designed and built this venue for Oklahoma City and now it is inviting the world to Oklahoma not just for these World Championships, but for the Olympic Games. The worlds have only been held in America three times now: at the Savage in 1989, at Deep Creek in 2014, and now in Oklahoma in 2026 as a precursor to the 2028 Olympics. We couldn’t be more proud to have designed the venue that hosted these world championships and the 2028 Olympics. This race, and particularly Evy’s medal, showcase that America is ready to host not only a world championships, but the coming Olympics.”
–By Kent Ford
Read more on Evy Here.