EPIC Legacy Kayaks – Design
Ted and Greg Barton teamed up to design and build the Epic Legacy K1 and K2
Why did you team up with Ted Van Dusen for the Epic Legacy K1 & K2?
Ted and I go back many years. In 1987 Van Dusen told me he had tow tank drag measurements on a prototype hull that tested faster than the Cleaver K-1, which I was paddling at the time. I encouraged him to mold it, put a deck on it and get one for me to race. The prototype (which was not intended to be a finished kayak) became the Eagle. I switched to this boat 6 weeks before the World Championships and won two gold medals that year (K-1 1000 and 10,000m) by considerable margins at the ICF Worlds in Duisburg. Three of my four Olympic medals (including both Golds) were won in Van Dusen boats. Previously Van Dusen kayaks were relatively expensive, which led paddlers to seek out lower cost European made boats. With our new state of the art production facility, I saw an opportunity to make high performance K-1’s and K-2’s at reasonable costs. I contacted Ted and suggested that we work together to develop and produce a new generation of state of the art ICF boats.
Read More…Greg Barton’s Legacy
