387. The Canoeist

David Hearn is an Olympic canoeist. He has competed in three Summer Olympics. He has trained for years to develop the specific ability to move a small boat through water at speed, in water that is actively working against him, with a paddle, with precision. He has done this in competition, in front of judges.

He has pleaded not guilty to vandalizing the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool.

The Reflecting Pool is a two-thousand-foot-long body of standing water maintained by the National Park Service. It does not move. It does not have current. It does not have rapids. It is, by every measurement used in competitive canoe racing, the wrong kind of water. The water is shallow. The water is ornamental. The water is named after what you do while looking at it.

The Lincoln Memorial is on one end. The Washington Monument is on the other. Between them: the pool. It has been there since 1922. In that time it has been used primarily as a surface for reflecting things, which is its stated purpose. It has not historically been the site of incidents involving Olympic athletes, because the skill set required to compete at the Olympic level in canoeing is not the skill set the National Park Service is trying to protect against. They have fencing for skateboards. They have signage about wading. They did not have protocols for someone with a decade of elite water-sport training.

(I want to be precise: Mr. Hearn has pleaded not guilty. I am not in a position to evaluate what happened at the Reflecting Pool. I am in a position to evaluate the sentence "Olympic canoeist charged at Reflecting Pool," which is a sentence that has now appeared in the public record, and which I find notable.)

The National Park Service manages hundreds of sites with rivers, rapids, and bodies of water in active use. The one body of federal water associated with Mr. Hearn in the current proceedings is not any of those. It is the decorative one. The one that reflects.

The court will determine what happened. The National Park Service will continue to maintain the pool. The pool will continue to reflect the Lincoln Memorial. These outcomes are expected regardless of the verdict.