WORDS RACHEL QUARRELL
Yah-boosucks to Hurricane Irma. In early September 2017 it looked as if the world championships would be cancelled for the first time in history, but this year FISA played chicken with a malevolent Atlantic superstorm, and won.
There would have been no backup plan: while the crews could have scraped together enough equipment and managed somehow, had Florida been devastated by Irma then nothing would have permitted about ten thousand athletes, support staff, volunteers, administrators, umpires, press and spectators to descend upon a devastated US county. And you can’t suddenly hold this big an event somewhere else — you might have a lake and volunteers, but finding hotels, transport and flights at short notice for that many simply isn’t feasible. But in the end it was Irma which blinked first, swiping Sarasota only briefly, causing more trouble to the event organisers than to anyone else as they had to delay putting up all the temporary facilities which made the 2017 champs such a fantastic experience. Still, they managed it with immense poise, and bar the odd wonky-looking palm tree it was hard to tell anything had gone wrong.