If you were watching Olympic kayaking over the weekend, you may have seen Czech kayaker flash a claw-like hand signal鈥攊magine palming a basketball鈥攋ust after recording the day鈥檚 second-fastest time. To most people, it was meaningless. But to the world of freestyle and extreme kayakers, it was a signal that they鈥檇 had arrived on the world stage. You see, surfers have the shaka, the Obamas have the fist bump, Texans have the hookem鈥 horns, and kayakers have, sigh, the brown claw.
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Unlike those other respected signs of kinship and belonging, the brown claw dates back no more than six years. That鈥檚 when a crew of kayakers in their twenties who call themselves the 鈥攎ost notably Evan Garcia, 听Jared Seiler, and Dave Fusilli鈥攃ame up with the gesture. In kayaking, running difficult whitewater is known as running 鈥渢he sh*t鈥 or, more recently, 鈥渢he brown.鈥 The missing link between the two originated in the Sacha Baron Cohen mockumentary Borat. Specifically, it comes from the scene where Borat gets some manners coaching ahead of a dinner party and asks his hostess: 鈥淲hat if I should say that I need to … to go to the place where you make the brown.鈥 As he does this, he makes the gesture to signify holding a bag of feces.
The kayakers鈥攍et鈥檚 call them irreverent鈥攂egan offering up the brown claw during freestyle rodeos, while cascading over waterfalls, and just about any time a camera was pointed their way. And since they鈥檙e the best kayakers at the moment, other people began to imitate them鈥攎ostly in jest, but still. The brown claw caught on among people who like to scare themselves by running really hard whitewater. The brown claw got a . And over the weekend, the brown claw was in the Olympics.