SIGHT SEEING

On Wednesday we went to have a look at one the many castles you see driving around Europe. 

We were lucky enough to have a guided tour around it and learn about the history. 

Just as well the tour guide was hot or i would of lost interest pretty early on in the piece. 

There were 600 steps that we climbed up, was a bit better than the 880 that we were told before hand. 

Teen Cup 2 is just around the corner

We arrived here in Liptovsky Mikula at the start of the week for the second Teen Cup, which has quickly approached us. 

Training on the coarse gets better as the days go by. The coarse consist of 2 chutes and and a number of holes throughout, which are prefect for ups and 'S' gates. 

The number of competitors will be similar to last week, but there are alot of new faces. 

The weather has seemed to play its part this week being between 25 and 35 degrees, apposed to last week being under 20 degrees and raining. 

Racing starts on Saturday and is from 9am to 8pm. I am unsure when my race is but the results can be found here http://avs.ktklm.sk/.

Teen Cup Number 1

Teen Cup 1 down 3 more to go. 

On Saturday the first Junior Cup was held in Bratislava, Slovakia. This is where the World Championship are held later on in there year and is the Olympic selection for New Zealand.  

There were roughly 300 athletes, from 15 different nations. 

Qualifications were on Saturday and if you made top 20 paddlers in your age group you went through to the semi-finlas on Sunday.

My first run in Qualifications was clean and solid, leaving my in 6th position. This meant i was able to experiment a little bit in run 2.

 

I more or less paddled the same as i did in run 1 but cut my lines a little bit more. I ended up going 3 seconds faster, but so did everyone else. I was left in 6th place going through to the semi finals.

Semi-finals, what a nervous wait that was. I finished my semi-final run not to happy having 2 touches, thinking i had no hope in making finals. 

Luckily i had the 3rd fastest flat time and i wasn't the only messy one. Therefore leaving me qualifying in 4th place into finals, with fellow team mate Callum Gibb hot on my tail in 5th. 

I went into finals with the mind set of going clean and just trying to have a solid run and i would be happy.  It was a pretty good run although I was still able to take in a few things i need to work on for next time, but it certainly left me very happy in third position and Callum in 5th.

Photo's were by Aaron Osborne. 

Check out his website http://www.aaronosborne.co.nz/

Europe

Made it to europe last night, trouble free. With kayak and gear all still intact. Sandra and Callum Gibb picked me up from the airport and we drove to Augsburg which was an hour from the airport. 

Got to Augsburg at about 7pm so was pretty tired after nearly 24 hours traveling with very little sleep on the planes. There was no doubt i caught up on it after a 13 and half hour sleep last night. Probably be awake all night tonight now. 

The course is pretty cool here, bit better than the last place we were at before leaving the states.

There is a cool little chute with a nice eddie on the left and the water going straight into a wall on the right about half way down the coarse. There are also a few nice ups on holes and good eddies the rest of the way down the coarse. 

Junior Pre Worlds!!!

Yahoooooo. Made a international final. 

Today we had the Junior Pre World Semi-finals and Finals. I was in second place after the qualification yesterday and was hoping for a solid day of racing today. 

I had my doubts that the racing was going to go ahead today as there was a thundered storm predicted and with carbon being conductor, might not have been the best thing.

But it did so there was smiles all round. 

Semi-finals, the plan was to have a solid run and hopefully go clean. Unfortunately i didn't go clean having one of the stupidest touches but other than that it was pretty solid. So it was a nervous wait for results. Once results came out i wasn't the only one that touched so all was good and was through to the finals along with fellow team mates Finn and Foxy. 

Finals, I was in 2 minds either to go all out or play it safe. I ended up playing it safe and it worked out good in the end. I got a little stuck in 13 and felt my self going back into the hole but luckily it didn't grab me to much and was able to paddle out. I carried on to have a clean and solid run. 

Leaving me pretty happy in 2nd place. 

Along with Finn in third from New Zealand and Michal Smolen in First from USA

Cole and Laurence along with the rest of them under a tree to get out of the sun. 

Great hiding spot for the car keys

Gull RIver

What an eventful week it was here!! We found out that we were competing in the teva races series and the top 15 paddlers got the latest Teva booties so this made everyone super keen to get out there and give everything a go, including myself. 

First off we had the boatercross. This is when 4-6 people race down a certain part of the river at the same time and more or less anything goes. This was my first ever boatercross so i was pretty dam nervous at the start line. 

Having a fast turn around i got in the lead at the start and managed to maintain that all the way to the finish line. Therefore pushing me into the semi-finals. 

Semi-finals got my heart beating. I had another fast turn around and was in the lead going down the dam. Eddying out at the bottom, i thought it was all over. A fast recovery had me back on track to come in 2nd place, just scraping onto the finals.

Finals, once again had a fast turn around but so did everyone else. There was all four of us going down the dam at the start, only turning into carnage at the bottom. Cole rode up on top of me and we got caught up but after sorting that out i was in third. But once again i eddied out and it was all over, everyone was gone. So i ended up coming 4th, still pretty happy with that.

The Photo finish, for the finals between Cole and Michael.

Here is a video of the boatercross. 

Gull River Boater Cross 2011 from Flow Addicts on Vimeo.

So after that we had a little freestyle event. The wave was flushing alot on the right so it was pretty hard to pull off any good moves i think the limit of the field was more or less a flat spin. I think i ended up 5th.

The next day was the first slalom race. It was a pretty hard river but a not so difficult coarse. The river had a drop at the top with quite good eddied on both sides, flowed by a number of good holes. At the bottom of the coarse there was a pretty cool slide but wasn't to much you could do on it as there was a rock at the bottom. 

We all got told there was price money for this race so the level of racing picked up. i had a solid first run but had 2 touches once again. Second run, my goal again was to go clean but once again i had one touch. With everyone having a good race it was a nervous wait for results. They finally came out and i won but .2 of a second. Therefore meant i won 150 Canadian dollars and another trophy. 

The final Day. This was the final day of the Teva race series and the last slalom race. 

It was on a different section of the gull river, a slightly more flat section. But this time the river was slightly easier but the coarse was harder. 

I had a good first run but touching 2 gates AGAIN, this left me so focused on going clean as it is the last race till the big one. 

My second run was probably the best run i have had in a long long time. I had a clean run and ran the boat through the whole coarse . So was super happy. 

The final results for this race was me 1st in juniors on 96seconds and cole 2nd 101seconds and the fastest time of the day was a 93seconds. 

MKC Slalom Race.

We have had pretty rubbish internet over the pass week, so havn't tired to update the blog. 

After the Pumphouse slalom race we went to the next one which was at MKC (Madawaska Kanu Centre). We got there the night before the race so didn't get any practice on the coarse, but the coarse looked good. There were a few tricky moves in the coarse and some shallow eddies, which lead to difficult moves as you had to keep your boat flat and not sink the tale.   

The next morning there was a downriver sprint, which started a couple hundred meters up river from the slalom coarse and ran through the slalom coarse. This was flowed straight after by the slalom race. 

The Downriver sprint went alot better than i thought. I was the only person in a slalom boat to break the 3min mark.  

Unfortunately i had 2 touches in my first slalom run but still had the lead going into the second runs. My goal for second runs was to have a clean run. Sadly that didn't happen but it was better and i only had one touch. The good thing was i managed to hold on to the lead with the touch and received the biggest trophy of my life. 

 Sadly i had to leave it behind

 The stone i won for the downriver sprint

Me and cole looking for rocks in the up.

The Storm we were going to drive through luckily enough it just missed us or we missed it.