Monday, May 4, 1998
By George F. Lee, Star-Bulletin
Jim Foti paddles for the finish line in yesterday's
Canoe Sports Ka'iwi Challenge.
Team Foti again
up to Ka‘iwi Challenge
The brothers win the 40.2-mile
By Catherine Toth
canoe race for the fourth straight time
Special to the Star-BulletinYesterday's Canoe Sports Ka'iwi Challenge single canoe relay race gave new meaning to the phrase "No pain, no gain."
"It hurt," said Jim Foti, who along with older brother, John, won the 40.2-mile race from Molokai to Magic Island for the fourth straight year. "Swells were pretty good. There was a lot of good surf, but there were some times that it seemed like we were working too hard."
The two brothers battled rivals Mark Rigg and Walter Guild across eight-foot waves. The Foti team finished in 4 hours, 57 minutes, 57 seconds. Rigg and Guild finished in 4:58:19.
"It was just back and forth the whole way across," Rigg said. "We'd get a 100- to 150-yard lead and then they'd close that and then get another 100 yards on us and then we'd come back. It was just like that the whole way across."
Guild said the conditions helped the competition.
"I thought (the conditions) were excellent," said Guild, who teamed with Rigg to beat the Foti team in last weekend's Canoe Sports Coastal Relay race from Kailua to Magic Island. "We really lucked out because the last two days would've been pretty tough out there, but we surfed all the way across."
The 20 mph easterly winds pushed the Foti team ahead when it needed it.
"We went pretty north and just hung with each other," Jim Foti said. "We just kept pushing each other. Nobody wanted to fall south of the other guy."
But it wasn't until the finish line that Jim Foti, who paddled the last leg, was confident the team would rack up its fifth Ka'iwi Challenge win in six years.
"(I was thinking) that he (Guild) was catching me and was about to pass me and I'd better hurry up and get to the damn finish line," Jim Foti said."They stretched it 30 seconds further than us and they're champs," Rigg said. "Good for them."
In the women's open division, defending champions Mary Smolenski and Nicole Wilcox were dethroned by first-time competitors Donna Kahakui and Malia Kamisugi.
Kahakui-Kamisugi finished in 6:23:22 to win by nearly two minutes.
"We wanted to do good and just stay with the front (boats)," Kahakui said. "There's a lot of really good teams out there."
Despite not having much time to practice together -- Kamisugi attends school in San Francisco, Kahakui lives in Hawaii -- both were confident their specializations would mesh.
"I'm better in the flat and she's better in the surf," Kahakui said. "We were hoping we would complement each other."
For Kahakui and Kamisugi, it was smooth sailing -- until they took the lead.
"I blew it," Kahakui said. "I was ahead and I didn't have anybody to follow so I just kind of went on my own little course."
"She was on her way to Kauai," Kamisugi added.
"Yeah," Kahakui said. "I went too north."
Despite a two-minute lead over Smolenski and Wilcox, who finished in 6:25:19, Kahakui and Kamisugi never let up.
"When I came across the line, that's when I knew," Kahakui said. "I never take anything for granted on anybody."
The event was the second in a three-race series regarded as the world championship of open ocean one-person canoe racing.
The champs
Open men Jim Foti-John Foti, 4:57.57
