KUSA - A Steamboat Springs man rescued a kayaker who came out of his boat during the most dangerous part of a river race earlier this month.
Gwendolyn Arvidson captured video of Luc Strickland's amazing rescue during the 20th annual Green River Narrows Race in North Carolina on November 7.
For some reason, kayaker Nick Fielder came out of his kayak just before Gorilla Rapids. It's the most treacherous part of the course, so rescuers are standing by just in case.
"Every time that a racer approaches Gorilla Rapids there are people up at the top that start ringing little bells, so you know that there's a boat approaching," said Arvidson. "But when the bell started ringing the time that the swimmer came through, I heard people say, there's a swimmer. There's a swimmer!"
She grabbed her phone and started recording.
"I just have a habit of filming things so I thought I'll catch this too and I'll show my family and It'll be really cool," she said. "It turned into this thing, I didn't expect it to be so popular. It was a really cool moment, it was a really cool save that Luc Strickland did that was really awesome."
It was actually Strickland's second rescue of the day.
"The other rescue was different because the swimmer was further out in the water. He was farther from Luc to begin with but he also didn't have the obstacle of the boat between him and the swimmer. When he did his leap frog over the boat, that was the thing that made it really really remarkable."
Nick Fieldler is the kayaker who ended up in the water. He broke his tailbone and fractured two vertebrae and is not expected to return to a boat for at least 8 weeks.
Arvidson says rescuers like Strickland go through a lot of training.
"It's called live-baiting and it's something that's done in kayaking and it's something that is practiced for those sorts of moments," she said. "Safety is really important in kayaking. And there's a lot of effort that's put into it."
(© 2015 KUSA)
