It took a historic comeback to do it, but Mike Davis and Guillaume Blais are your 2024 Consumers Energy AuSable River Canoe Marathon champions. Davis, of Homer, MI and Blais, of Saint-Boniface, QC found themselves as far back as fourth place and over 13 minutes behind the leaders, before surging in the final hours to claim the victory.
“I couldn’t be happier,” Davis, a first time marathon winner, said. “Guillaume is one of the very best paddlers ever and a great friend, he is a great guy. I’m happy to have won it with him.”
This gives Blais his second marathon title, after winning it in 2022 with the legendary Steve LaJoie.
“I’m very happy to win with Mike,” Blais said. “It is a hard race, so I am very happy to win here with Mike. He is a very good partner.”
The sufferfest that is the marathon began Saturday at 9 p.m. in downtown Grayling. 100 two man teams ran with their canoes LeMan’s style down the city streets, and entered the waters of the AuSable River. From there they paddled non-stop 120 miles to downtown Oscoda, portaging over five dams along the way. The event annually draws some of the best paddlers not only from the state of Michigan, but many from Texas, New York, Minnesota and other states; as well as multiple international competitors. Thirteen teams dropped out for various reasons due to the high physical demand of the marathon.
Davis and Blais won the marathon with a time of 14 hours, 35 minutes and 26 seconds; about seven minutes ahead of the second place canoe. Davis and Blais did get off to a bit of a slow start however. They fell back as far as 13 minutes and three seconds behind leaders Wes Dean and Ryan Halstead at 4001 Bridge. At Alcona Dam (with about five hours left of the race) they were still trailing by 12 minutes and 48 seconds.
At Loud Dam they surged to second place and were about nine minutes behind. When they reached the final checkpoint, Foote Dam, that gap was just under three minutes. Throw in the fact that a member in the Dean and Halstead boat battled illness in the final hours, there was just no stopping Davis and Blais on their way to victory.
“We were never too far out of second place, so we put our sights on second and once we got to second, first place came within striking distance, so we just kept putting in the work,” Davis said. “It was hard going by Wes and Ryan at the end in the shape that they were in, but we put on the race we needed to in order to get to the finish line and I couldn’t be more happy.”
The 13 minute and three second deficit they faced at 4001 Bridge is the largest deficit a team has overcome to win the marathon. Davis and Blais were teammates in last year’s race as well, when they took third place thanks to a similar late surge.
“Honestly, this was one of the best starts I’ve had for the first hour, hour-and-ahalf of the race, but we still got ridiculously far back,” Davis said. “Last year we made up a bunch of time at the end, so we knew we could do it again this year if we needed to. It took a lot of grinding, a lot of work, a lot of faith and when we caught them they were kind of done. We went hard for about 15 minutes and then we started to fall apart too, but we hung on at the end.”
For complete race results visit www.ausablecanoemarathon. org and for further
info on the Michigan Canoe Racing Association and their sponsored events, visit www.miracing.com.
