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

Rock Island World Cup Round Up – Go Europe!

So the first event of the 2012 World Cup has just finished here in the USA.

The feature in Rock Island was very very tough and no one had much time on the water to practice, which meant quite a lot of surprises from the favourites and some unexpected successes for others.

From the beginning this World Cup it was going to be a battle between the Europeans and the North Americans. For this play spot in Rock Island the Jackson group were definitely favourites with this being their home spot.

They were very consistent in practice, you can see that they know this feature better than anyone else even this level is very unusual for them.

For myself it’s only been 3 weeks since I broke my Collarbone so my biggest hope was that I could compete at all, I knew I probably wasn’t likely to be at the top but I did manage to get a few moves and was very happy to make it to Quarter Finals and finish 17th.

Everything was going smoothly for the North Americans until today when things didn’t go to their plan. In the men’s Semi Finals, Nick Troutman just missed the cut for top 5 after winning the previous two rounds. Then European Junior Girls took the first two places in their final with Nuria from Spain winning.

In Women’s the unpredictable nature of the feature claimed Claire O’Hara current World Champion and Ruth Gordon Ebens former World Champion as casualties in the semis so it was only Nina Csonkova left from the European team in the Final. She got 2nd having pretty consistent rides but no one could really compete with Emily Jackson here who had impressive rides every time to take the Win.

Watching the men’s finals was a real pleasure with the Europeans really getting behind Quim and Peter. For quite a while Quim from Spain was leading with a score over 600 but Dane and EJ was going very hard, with Dane finally taking the lead from Quim with 750points. It looked like this result would stick until Peters last ride when he put himself together and really showed his skill and control to get a 900+point ride.

The sudden change in the European crowds mood was lifted to the sky as we almost lost hope of a win here until Peter last ride. Dane was last to go and had looked on fire here, he knew Peters score and must have felt under pressure. He flushed early in his last ride, this feature isn’t quite retainable, the paddle back up takes 20 seconds so he didn’t have time to really recover when he got back in the hole.

This meant of course that here on the Jackson’s home spot the European teams hero of the moment Peter Csonka took the win with Dane 2nd and Quim 3rd. Gold and Bronze goes to Europe, for us it doesn’t really matter who wins this World Cup, it matters where he’s from. I really want the Europeans to continue to show what we’re capable of here. Hopefully I will be in shape for the last event in 2 weeks time.

For now Congratulations to Peter! We all felt like we’d shared a part of this victory, it was very well deserved.

The Pigeon river World Cup starts in two days, probably without any practice but is much more retentive and consistent apparently, it might all be a different story.

Pringle