2020 Ontario Virtual Championships Announcement

To protect our athletes, coaches, officials, volunteers, and paddling community CKO Sprint has made the difficult decision to not host an in-person Ontario Championships in 2020.  Instead, CKO Sprint will be providing an Ontario Virtual Championships where paddlers will compete remotely across the province from their individual clubs.  The Ontario Virtual Championships scheduled for the August 29/30 weekend will align with a planned Canoe Kayak Canada (CKC) virtual event over the same weekend. 

The goal of the event is to celebrate all things paddling and will include U12, U14, U16, U18, Junior/Open, Masters, Special Olympic and Para events with the potential for live, real-time results.

We will work with CKC and your Divisional coach representatives, Rob Stott, and Pat Lester to develop a competition format that is safe, fun, and challenging.  Full event details will be published by Friday, July 24th.

In conjunction with the Ontario Virtual Championships, CKO Sprint will also be running a weekly Ontario Power Ranking, starting Monday, July 27th.  Each week clubs/athletes can submit their time control results based on a set distance each week and compare those results from competitors across Ontario.  The Ontario Virtual Championships will be the final event in the Ontario Power Ranking.

Finally, since we are unable to provide a fair, open, in-person competition in 2020, no additional athletes will be named to the Ontario Development Team.  All 2020-2021 Ontario Team Program (OHPSI, OAAP, Development Team) nominations will be based on our current 2019-2020 nominations.  If a current nominated athlete is excluded from the 2020-2021 Ontario Team Programs nominations due to a nomination to the National Team, retires or is unable to fulfill their Athlete Agreement, the next ranked athlete will be nominated to the team based on 2019 Ontario Team selection results, using 2019-2020 Ontario Team selection criteria (OHPSI and OAAP Team only). 

Thank you for the great work clubs and coaches are doing by providing excellent programming during this new and difficult environment. 

See you at the 2021 Ontario Championships!

Ryan Blair
Technical Director, Canoe Kayak Ontario (CKO) Sprint