Tracy Sage
WATER GIRL

"Sage's tricks earned her a seat
on the U.S. Freestyle Kayaking
Team in '03 and '04 "

by Kara Tatone

Skinning up for a midwinter ski in Ophir, our conversation buoys from meditation and yoga to a river's wave and inspiring more women to paddle it. Longtime local and professional freestyle kayaker Tracy Sage is thinking about spring thaw and getting back in her boat. This is Sage’s fourth season competing on the Pro U.S. Freestyle Kayaking circuit and, again she'll paddle competitive flows from Oregon to Ottawa, amid international sojourns, with an inclination to secure another invite to World Championships in 2007. “It is very challenging as an American woman. We literally have 20 women that could qualify, but only three make it on the team. There is a strong, deep field of paddlers in the U.S.,” she says.

Sage has paddled Zimbabwe and Zambia, Turkey, Argentina, Chile, Nepal and India. She makes her home in Telluride operating her own business, Alpine Massage, and paddles regional rivers en route to international competitive boating. “Paddling a feature, wave or hole is great. It's like skiing powder that never gets tracked up,” says Sage. She's an avid skier and in the spring exchanges mediums, frozen water for whitewater, chasing warm, running rivers in Arizona, Idaho and California to train. Paddling closer to home holes like the Upper Dolores, Ledges at San Miguel, the Animas and the Arkansas usually hit their optimal flow late spring, early summer. “My favorite local spots are true to my heart," says Sage. “They are really fun to paddle and you look up and around, and it's so beautiful; you think, ‘Oh my God, this is my home.’”

Sage got two starts to paddling almost 10 years apart and more than 2,500 miles distant, from her native Upstate New York to southwestern Colorado. She first paddled the Penobscot River, Maine, when kayaks were bulky and Sage was only 14 years old. "I was pretty small, kayaks were really long and everything was big. We were little and I don't think honestly anyone in school learned to roll but we liked it. I love it,” she says. Sage returned to kayaking in her early 20s paddling locally. As boats got smaller, play holes and waves became the platform for Sage's aerial tricks—loops, space godzillas, blunts and cartwheels—most of which puts Sage six feet out of water, flipping forward. Sage defines Squirt boating, a fiberglass freestyle boat, like a choreographed dance and in 2003 and 2004 she earned a seat on the U.S. Freestyle Kayaking Team for the dance. Sage's farthest feats this summer could be Lyon, France and Uganda's White Nile with the South Africa-based kayak maker, and her sponsor, the Fluid Team. Future feats could be right at home if a play park materializes on the San Miguel. Sage hopes to provide clinics to teach what she's learned in competitive paddling, and coach an ongoing freestyle program for teens. This spring Sage hopes to hold play boating clinics on the Upper Dolores if snow pack runoff flows high.

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