2013 Worlds: the final showdown…

The 2013 Worlds has come to a close and I’ve never seen such closely fought finals or whole event actually. It was one of the best spectacle’s freestyle kayaking has ever seen. From the atmosphere, to the crowd support & the calibre of athlete, everyone involved can be proud to have been a part of this event.

Junior Men

http://www.noc.com/scoreboard/pdfs/OFFICIAL%20FINALS%20K-1%20Junior%20Men%20Results.pdf

In the Junior men we saw a glimpse into the future top men of Kayaking, and it’s not going to be much a jump up for the top 3.

In 3rd place we had Alec Voorhees, a paddler that really impressed me, I saw him paddle last year and he was good but then this year he’s managed to learn all moves, and manages to throw them on demand, a very nice style and good attitude too, if he add’s a bit of speed in there this coming year he’s going to really cause some trouble.

2nd spot went to my French friend Thomas Richard, a paddler so smooth, precise and stylish that you can’t help but stop and watch him when he starts ripping, he threatened to finish the finals on his first ride with a 1006 point ride almost sealing 1st place for himself, but Hunter stepped up to the mark. Thomas though is a big star in the making and I’m really happy for him!

 

A deserved 1st place went to Hunter Katich from the USA with a whopping 1200 points (a score that puts him 4th in the men, just 40points of winning men’s). He was simply the best through the whole event, and he’s making senior men very scared already Well done Hunter, a spectacular win!

 

 

 

Junior Women

http://www.noc.com/scoreboard/pdfs/OFFICIAL%20FINALS%20K-1%20Junior%20Women%20Results.pdf

Junior women’s was the best fight i’ve ever seen in this class, the standard was awesome. It was a true battle for first between Nuria Fontane Maso of Spain and Rowan Stewart of  USA. Nuria has the consistency, but Rowan had the bigger moves.

In the end Rowan pulled it out of the bag with her Phonic’s & Mc’Nasties, the first time these moves have been shown in a Junior Women’s final which just shows how the standard is growing to incredible levels. She won with a score of 423 a fantastic display!

Nuria Fontane Maso ended up 2nd with a very valiant fight, she was a fierce competitior and came very close to snatching the title with her 380 point ride. She performed brilliantly and can be proud of herself, with a big move thrown in next time the title would be hers, I’m sure we’ll see a lot more of her in the future.

Kim Aldred of GB rounded out the top 3 giving a solid performance to score 200 points! I think she will be please with this and know that with a another 2 years work she will be a contender for Gold!

 

C1

http://www.noc.com/scoreboard/pdfs/OFFICIAL%20FINALS%20C-1%20Men%20Results.pdf

The C1 it was one of the best fights ever seen. It was between USA’s Tad Dennis, Jordan Poffenberger & Dane Jackson all were worthy of the win. I’ve never seen such high scoring rides from C1.

1st place was commandingly sealed by Jordan Poffenberger with a huge 1068 point ride. He was the most deserving of the 3 and rightfully took his Gold medal home. The best C1 paddler over the last few years it’s only correct he was rewarded for his incredible skills and huge snappy, spectacular moves.

 

2nd went to the new star of C1 Tad Dennis, only recently switching to Freestyle from Slalom, if he keeps at it, he’ll be unbeatable! His semi’s performance was heat stoppingly good.

3rd went to Dane Jackson, no surprises that he made top 3, but now it looks like he has some stiff competition in C1, he had some spectacular rides and some of the biggest moves.

 

Women K1

http://www.noc.com/scoreboard/pdfs/OFFICIAL%20FINALS%20K-1%20Women%20Results.pdf

In the Women’s I first want to mention my wife Katya, it was the first finals ever made by a Russian and her best result ever, she was the star of the show in semi’s and deserved a medal place. Finals day came and the tiredness of the week and the late night semi’s caught up with her. She threw her hardest, almost getting her Nasty or Fonix 3 times then just flushing a bit too far to score,  she ended up 5th. Watching her get a spectacular 2nd place in the semi’s was one of the best days of my life, I’d actually rate the feelings above winning 2011 Worlds for myself. For her this is just the beginning of things to come…

4th went to Palm’s Anne Hubner, she is such a good competitor and has made such good progress in her freestyle this last year, it’s a shame she missed the podium but I can already see the new stars that are rising up. I was very impressed with you Anne, You and Katya are going to be killing it in the years to come!

3rd place went to a very surprised Adrienne Levknecht, a result I think she’s ecstatic about, normally rated as the top creek racer she’s now proved herself as a top Freestyle contender too, incredible!

Now the battle for the top spot was immense, Hitomi Takatu of Japan looked like she had it in the bag with her 1st ride score of 650, it was such a great performance by her and she really deserved the win too. Hitomi is an amazing talent and surely a Champion of the future!

 

Claire looked under pressure and everyone thought Hitomi was going to take the Gold but then in her last ride, Claire O’hara of GBR showed the true qualities of a champion and rose to the occasion snatching her 2nd World title and the Gold medal with a 705 point ride, such a good performance under that kind of pressure! I think Claire has really pushed on the level of women’s kayaking with many now doing the bigger moves and not putting limits in their heads. Claire just managed to win this time and I think next time the other girls inspired by Claire’s success will be there to really take the battle to the next level.

Men

http://www.noc.com/scoreboard/pdfs/OFFICIAL%20FINALS%20C-1%20Men%20Results.pdf

The men’s final was so so close you can’t believe, the top 3 were separated by just 32 points basically 1 cartwheel and the top 2 by 8 points (less than a spin). It seems a shame they don’t all get a Gold when it’s that close as that really isn’t anything between them, it all comes down to judging when it’s that close.

Top place went to Dane Jackson of the USA with 1240. It wasn’t his best display ever, but if you look at how he paddled through the whole event he deserved this win. He just goes so big & clean the bonus’s he racks up make him very hard to beat (as shown Congrats Dane!

I thought Slovakia’s Peter Csonka had the win with his first ride, but he must have not scored something as he ended up 2nd for the third time in his life. With a score of 1233…8 points from winning…

I’m sorry for Peter he was the paddler who first inspired me to train and learn all my moves both ways in 2007 then together with Katya’s influence in 2009 they motivated me to get out of Uganda, stop wasting my life and begin training properly, he along with Katya are the main two reason’s I won Worlds in 2011. He is such a good competitor, paddler and generally nice guy. I’m sure it’s heart breaking for him to come so so close yet again, but in my eyes he’s a real World Champion even if he hasn’t got the medal to prove it (yet…) For the record I scored you 1300 minimum, which would have been 1st.

It’s been a pleasure competing with you this last few years Peter and I wish we can be in a Worlds final together again next time both of us at our best!

3rd spot went to my good friend & fellow Dagger paddler Tomasz Czaplicki of Poland. He showed how big and snappy he & the Jitsu are and was the surprise star of this Worlds. He came 3rd with 1208! He was also deserving of the win.

Tomasz is a paddler i’ve admired for years and I’m so pleased things finally came together for him this year. I think he’s going to be getting plenty more medals in the coming years and am stoked to paddle on the same team as him! His moves were the most spectacular of the whole event.

5th spot deserves a mention too. Alan Ward or GBR returned to glory and put on a valiant display, the only paddler in the final with a full-time job, I can only imagine what he would do with his full attention! I was really proud of him and how he focused this time, I hope we can both be in a finals together one day! It’s brilliant we have such talent in the UK!

Final Comments

Well that’s it for now, a huge thanks to the organisers, the judges, the people of North Carolina, all my personal sponsors and my family & friends for supporting me.

We had a great time at the event. I know that I had the potential to win here based on my practice rides but not the consistency as it turns out. I just never really got going this time. I’m not disappointed at all though, coming short is a part of winning, being a top athlete you have to accept that in order to win, sometimes you have to fall short. I trained my hardest, did everything I could and am the best kayaker i’ve ever been. I have the best boat, kit and coach (Dennis Newton) so it’s just a matter of time before I’m back up there on the podium again. I know exactly what I need to do to be unbeatable so that’s my target for the next 2 years.

What I did learn here was that coming 11th didn’t touch my happiness or enjoyment of being at the event. I love my competitors for being so damn good, having such a calibre of paddler to compete against is what makes it so fun, if it would be easy, life would be a bore, but its such an exciting challenge! I think what I learnt from this trip is how to be a happier better person…to me at least more valuable than if I would have won, maybe that’s the lesson I had to learn before I can get to the top again.

Well done to all competitors, I wish everyone could be a winner, and they all are in my eyes!

Pringle

 

World Cup Finals at NOC!

The last event of this World Cup series at the Nantahala Outdoor Centre, the biggest event of the 3, is the decider of the whole series. It’s also the site of the next World Championships.

So the results from here will give us an indicator of whose looking good for next years Worlds, what we need to work on and who are the ones to beat currently.

The feature is a challenging powerful hole. All moves go in there, but it’s not an easy feature and you need to be fast and powerful to get good rides. The bonus of this event over the previous 2 was also that we had a full week of practice to get used to the feature.

First up of the competition was Mens Prelims. Cutting the field to the top 20. I’d been resting just having a couple practice rides during the week to give my collarbone a chance to heal up a bit after the Pigeon event.

I was really happy with how I was doing in the feature and how the new Dagger Jitsu is performing for me so even without much practice felt like I could compete well here.

I had really good rides and got 3rd place in the prelims, Peter was 1st and Dane 2nd. In the quarters the last 2 weeks of competition caught up with me and I couldn’t push properly on my right sued and finished up 12th. Happy it total but in need of a few weeks off the water to heal myself properly.

I really enjoyed the feature and am looking forward to being at full strength, trained up and un-injured ready to do battle here next year. I think I stand a good chance

In the finals it looked set to be an epic fight between Peter and Dane who’ve been stepping it up against each other every run throughout the series. Then we had Quim Fontane, Nick Troutman and Jason Craig who could easily step up and match them both to take the win here.

It was actually one of the best finals i’ve seen. Peter looked like he had it won with his first ride score of 1246 only for Jason Craig to jump close in his last ride full of big snappy moves to go into 2nd with an 1186.

Then on his last ride Dane shot into the lead with a huge 1316, with only Peter left to go and have one last shot to beat it.

Peter paddled in and let rip, getting all moves pretty much and fighting his hardest to get the Win, the whole crowd was going crazy for him. We were so happy when the score of 1538 came in! Peter 1st, Dane 2nd and Jason Craig 3rd.

This meant his 3rd win of the World Cup and the Overall World Cup 1st for Peter Csonka!

Really couldn’t have been more pleased for him, he really excelled this series and I can’t wait to get back on the water properly next season and compete in such a strong field.

Also worth an extra mention is the great performance of Jason Craig whose been off the water the last two years since a very serious back injury.

It was so great to see him back on the water paddling so well. Another year of training before Worlds and I think he will be another top competitor to add to the growing list of potential winners.

Results: Mens Prelims , Mens 1/4 Finals, Mens Semi Finals, Mens Finals

In the Women’s prelims and semis GBR’s Claire O’hara was leading but the rides weren’t that high scoring. Perhaps due to the difficulty of the feature.

The finals started slowly, the Women were going for the hard moves but missed them mostly, and scores comprised mostly of felix’s and loops. The Hole is tricky and powerful and it’s just not that easy for girls to get the highest scoring moves to go here, it requires a big amount of power and snappiness.

However on their 2nd rides the Women seemed to wake up and started to fight for the medals. Ruth Gordon threw a big ride with some Phonic’s, Mc’Nasties and Loops to get a 495. It was the highest score of the women’s competition so far and it seemed to motivate the women to do their best.

Next was Emily Jackson, getting good phonic’s both ways in her ride coming close and scoring 430. Claire O’hara tried to beat Ruth and Emily and improved on her 1st ride but not enough to move up.

Until the very last ride of the final it looked like Ruth would win. Claire was still sat in 3rd position with her last chance to get the top spot being the last ride of the event.

She really put herself together and went all out going for Switch Mc’nasty, Mc’Nasty, Phonics, Felix, Splits, a huge loop and scored a ride of 633 – a ride definitely worthy of her World Champion status!

She said after the competition that she could not believe what just happened in her rides

The fight in this final was definitely good enough to be a World Championships final. Claire’s score was the highest scoring ride of the series for Womens and in one of the harder features!

Overall Women’s World Cup went to Emily Jackson with Claire just behind in the overall standings taking 2nd.

Results: Womens Prelims, Womens Semi Finals, Womens Finals

In the Junior Mens Palm/ GBR’s Bren Orton was once again the one to watch with a win at the last event on the Pigeon, a 1st in the Prelims and Semi’s, his dominating paddling looked like the other juniors would have a hard time beating him at NOC.

In the finals Hunter Katich went huge on moves but just didn’t do quite enough moves to beat Bren. Brandurn Hepburn also of GBR came close too but in the end Bren’s 2nd ride score of 836 was unbeatable and he had the luxury of a victory lap last ride to claim his 2nd win of the series. Bren 1st, Hunter 2nd, Brandurn 3rd.

Despite Bren’s domination of the last two events  his unfortunate flush at Rock island made the difference in the end as the Overall Junior Mens winner was Hunter Katich of the USA with a 1st and two 2nds. I’m sure Bren’s great paddling will make him another tough competitor next year in his first senior Worlds.

Results: Junior Mens Prelims, Junior Mens Semi Finals, Junior Mens Finals

It’s been a really enjoyable trip. With my injury I wasn’t able to compete on the level i’d have liked to, but was very happy with the results I did get. It’s left me and Katya really motivated to train and get ourselves in the best shape for next season.

The NOC feature might well be changed before next year, we really liked it but regardless of feature next September is going to bring a very good competition.

I only wish it would be events every week with such a high standard to compete in It’s always a bit sad when events like these finish. During the series its like a little life for each event and now its over we have to wait quite a while for the next big event to come around. It also gives us lots of time to prepare and get ourselves on the next levels.

A final Congratulations to the overall winners – Peter Csonka, Emily Jackson, Hunter Katich and Nuria Fontane!

Full Results from all events

World Cup Videos – http://www.ustream.tv/channel/icf-canoe-freestyle-world-cup-2012/

Pringle

London 2012 Olympics – Freestyle Demonstration!

During the London 2012 Olympics it’s not just been Slalom going on at the Lee Valley Whitewater centre…

Myself, Claire O’hara, Uganda’s Juma Kalikwani, Japan’s Motoko Ishida, New Zealand’s Courtney Kerin, and USA’s Dane Jackson have all been part of  team putting on freestyle kayaking displays between the slalom races.

The aim to show freestyle to as many people as possible, get more kids into it and try to raise the sports profile as a whole (and have a good time doing it).

We were on each day in the break betweens finals and medals, or after the heats, so you might have heard or seen glimpses of us on the BBC footage. Unfortunately, I took myself out of the action with a broken collarbone after the 2nd day, having stacked it skateboarding back to the hotel after our show. Hoping to be back on the water for World Cups.

I was using the new Dagger Jitsu proto as my Guigui was deemed to colourful by the Officials, but the Jitsu even it was plastic was actually a joy to use here at Lee Valley, I’m certainly excited to see how the production one turns out, I think Dagger may well have created something quite special.

Been here at the Olympics has been exciting, fascinating and  an overall great experience. We had such a fun time with our team. Watching the incredible performances of GB’s C2 crews, especially Tim and Etienne taking the Gold and Silver  yesterday was unforgettable. I’ve never been so gripped by an event.

It didn’t matter what nation was racing when someone was on a winning time everyone began to cheer them on regardless! That is what was so great about the crowds here! and they seemed to love Freestyle!

Getting to see how all the various slalom athletes put themselves together trying to show their best, cheering them on and feeling the electric atmosphere has been amazing. The opening ceremony was like nothing I’ve ever been to, I was very impressed.

In my mind the Olympics is about working hard in pursuit of a goal or dream, trying to show the best of yourself and encouraging/ inspiring others with your actions. I think this is exactly what we saw there after you’ve stripped away all the official BS and commercialism at it’s core it’s still a celebration or humanity and how great the World is!

Anyway, here are some more photos of our time showing off Freestyle Kayaking and keep an eye out for the others this afternoon as they put on the last show.

Pringle

P.S. Thanks to Claire, Sportscene and Terry Best for the additional photos…