Still dripping from his final run, canoeist Jon Lugbill softly explained he was leaving slalom racing after failing to make the U.S. Olympic team.
His wife, Gill, fell into his chest sobbing. He said, "I'm sorry."A few feet away, Adam Clawson smiled for the cameras. He and Lugbill both retired in 1993 after disappointing finishes in the 1992 Games, but the teammates decided a year later to take another shot at the Olympics. They trained together all winter.
Clawson, 24, finished Sunday with a run of 2 minutes, 7 seconds, making him one of the eight paddlers representing the United States at the slalom events July 27-29 on the Ocoee River Olympic course. Lugbill is an alternate.
Considered one of the best in the world, Lugbill helped introduce such technological innovations as streamlined boats and dramatic paddling tactics such as bow and stern spins.
He is the only athlete with 11 gold medals in the whitewater World Championships. He missed the gold medal in 1992 by a slight gate touch. Without the five-second gate touch penalty, he would have won by seven-one hundredths of a second; with it, he placed fourth.
Lugbill, 34, had a faster run Saturday than David Hearn on the first ride down the rapids, and was nearly even on the second run if not for a 10-second gate touch penalty, which knocked him to second.
On Sunday, he got sucked into a nasty hydraulic rapid at the end of the quarter-mile course nicknamed "Humongous," costing him valuable seconds.
"I came back for the Olympics," said Lugbill of Richmond, Va. "This was it. I won't race anymore."
Kayaker Scott Shipley, 25, had two clean runs Saturday, but he, too, got hung up in Humongous. Unlike Lugbill, he survived the hole Sunday and stroked to the day's fastest finish, 2:31.
"I kind of feel like I got a pardon from the governor," said Shipley, the only paddler with consecutive international wins on the Ocoee course.
The U.S. qualified seven boats in the Games - one is a two-man canoe. Team members are David Hearn, Bethesda, Md., and Clawson, Bryson City, N.C., men's canoe; Dana Chladek, Kensington, Md., and Cathy Hearn, Bethesda, Md., women's kayak; Rick Weiss, Atlanta, and Shipley, Poulsbo, Wash., men's kayak; and Horace Holden, Bryson City, N.C., and Wayne Dickert, McDonald, Tenn., two-man canoe.
Whitewater slalom has been included in the Olympics only twice and both on man-made courses at Munich in 1972 and Barcelona in 1992. The Ocoee, located in the Cherokee National Forest about 60 miles northeast of Chattanooga, will be the Olympics' first natural course.