It’s been a sweet week of sunshine here in Switzerland; three days of competition are now over and there’s only one day left for the World Cup finale. The wave has proved tricky for some and just plain unlucky at times for others, scores have been much lower (in the majority of cases) than the previous two events.
From my point of view, I’ve really enjoyed paddling here despite the average number of people in the eddy queue being 20. I have to admit that I didn’t get on the water as much as some people (there were paddlers down there all times of the day and night), mostly because I’ve been resting a strained shoulder. I preferred to paddle in our team slots as we split ourselves into smaller groups, which limited the waiting. (It’s been noted that Team GB seemed to have longer nations’ training sessions; this did happen but only very slightly as a few paddlers who were initially registered didn’t then show up).
As the for competition itself, I had two good rides out of the available four with roundhouses and clean spins in there somewhere. I came 11th place. I had a number of people attempt to commiserate with me that I had missed the cut to the semi final and that it was only by 3 points but I was stoked! I had improved ten places on the previous week and was happy with my performance.
Today’s seen the senior men’s quarter final and all the semi finals take place. Lee Pyke, who went through in 3rd place in the C1 class to semi final round, put in a nice ride and is now 5th for tomorrow’s final. David Bainbridge decided to add some intensity to the final by flushing on his first move, having gone through in 1st place. His second ride, however, was amazing scoring 400+ points and he’s now in 1st yet again. Fiona Jarvie had gone through to the senior women’s semi final in second place having done nice air blunts in the prelims. Unfortunately she just couldn’t quite do the same again today and just missed the cut to the final. It was super close between all the women and Flea’s been putting in awesome runs all weeks. In the men’s Ed Smith was GB’s highest finishing taking 12th place.
In addition to the main competition there’s been various other activities, events and shows put on by the event organiser, Simon Hirter. It’s been a great week, with it’s success, the beautiful location and the plans that are already in place, next year’s World Championships looks set to be one to remember.
But before all that there’s the matter of the finals tomorrow and crowning the 2008 World Cup winners.
0 comments:
Post a Comment