GBR Freestyle Team Selection for 2012 Vienna Euros

Our GBR team selection to pick the team to compete at next years European champs in Vienna is a 3 competition format with the best 2 results out of the 3 counting.

This weekends event at Hpp, Nottingham was the first 2 comps of the 3. One on the Saturday in the inlet gate and one on the Sunday in the Twin waves. 3 rides best 2 count.

For me I am away for the last comp of the 3 the Hurley Rodeo so I needed to do well to secure my place.

I’m not going to go into that much detail on my runs but I managed pretty sweet rides hit a few of my combos both days (2400 on Sat, 1600 on Sunday) to take the double win and give me a guaranteed spot on the team to compete at the Euros

Palm’s Bren Orton got two 2nd place finishes in the Juniors to get his place guaranteed and Palm’s Lowri Davies also made the team

The main thing about the weekend was the incredibly high standard, the level of kayaking here is phenomenal. To make the mens top 10 on Saturday you needed to score something like 1200 or more!! The Juniors and the ex juniors who have just moved to senior are killing it! Its a credit to the awesome setup of events such as the Youth Freestyle series and the great freestyle spots we have allover the UK.

All summer me, Bren Orton, James Benn’s, James Weight, Ryan Liqourish & David Wild have been paddling a lot together working on our moves and trying to develop new moves or combinations of merged moves. This event our whole group put on a sick showing nailing sweet rides as well as pretty much all of our combo’s we’ve invented.

The point we wanted to make by getting our combos in a comp environment was to illustrate the need for some additions or some changes to the current scoring. For example if you merge a Lunar Orbit with a Tricky Whu with a Loop it only gets scored a Trophy 3 (200) but if you were to do them seperately you would get 380… For hole kayaking we need to encourage people to learn these moves and go for them in comps so they need to be scored much higher in order to reward the risk/ skill involved to hit them.

Anyhow I had a real fun weekend and was super proud watching the standard of kayaking in all categories here. This last 3 years the standard and depth of talent here continues to explode, its so good to see.

Here is a video Jonny Williams put up of some of the action from Saturday:-

Pringle

All the results will be up soon on GB Freestyle website for those who want to see exact scores.

Photos by:- Simon Thorne, Chris Throne & Bren Orton

Pringle & Katya: Plattling Training

We had such a great time in Galicia and Portugal, it was pretty hard to leave but as we got to the beginning of April came around we set off on the drive to Plattling in Germany.

This spot is where the World Championships will be held later in the year. Its a river wide weir with the best parts being the hole on the river left and two wavey sections in the middle and river right side. The level when we first arrived was super low and the weather baltic! But luckily for us that night the rains came in and brought the level up to ideal conditions for the holey section.

Having spent our time in Galicia enjoying the rivers & lifestyle aspect of kayaking along with surfing on the Frieira dam wave it was time to get into a more serious training mode in Plattling to get into shape to give the World Champs our best shot!

Its a good hole for sure but certainly not as easy as people generally think but it does give up some very good rides when you put the work into learnt the sweet spots. At higher levels you can get some ridiculous loops and lower levels you need to be careful to avoid the rocks but you can get really good rides still if your careful.

After 3 weeks paddling here together Katya flew back to Russia to compete in her team selections & apply for her Canadian visa in order to go to the Whitewater Grand Prix in Canada in May. This left me kind of alone living in the Van just paddling as much as I can until we fly out to Canada at the end of the month.

Thankfully their are a few others spending their time living in the carpark here and life in the van is one of my favourite aspects to the kayaking lifestyle. Looking in from the outside, being in a van all the time might seem a bit tough but in reality I love it, Kayak everyday, wake up next to the river, move on to the next spot without any hassle i really wouldn’t change anything.

I’ll be paddling here until the end of the month when both me & Katya fly out to Canada for the Whitewater Grand Prix event. Can’t wait

till next time,

Pringle & Katya