Plattling Freestyle Euro Cup

 

This last weekend the Plattling Eurocup Freestyle took place under some extremely stormy skies. Ever changing water levels and tough conditions meant lots of ups, downs, success’s and upsets for the competitors.

All together this made for an exciting and fun event to be a part of.

Myself I was one of very few plastic boats competing in a sea of Carbon, so it really goes to show how good the Jitsu is that I ended up in 3rd place, ironically 1st was also won in a plastic boat by the new German Champion Paul Meylahn.

In the womens Palm’s Katya (my wife paddled really well to take 3rd spot also. Not much separated the top 5 paddlers in either mens, or womens, due to the tough water level. However GB’s Claire O’hara came out in 1st of the ladies.

Palm’s Anne Hübner was doing really well earlier in the comp, even winning Semi’s with an impressive score but just fell short in the finals.

 

Below are my day to day updates for more on how the event unfolded.

Friday Prelims:

Mens & Womens Prelims are all done. Weather has made for some challenging high & changing levels meaning a few upsets and surprises.Both me & Katya survived to reach Semi’s. I had a horrible first ride then a good 2nd one that saved me.My Dagger Jitsu  was the only plastic boat to make the top 10…:-) Tomasz Czaplicki had great rides to place 1st in Mens, Nina Csonkova placed 1st in Womens.

Saturday Semi Finals:

It’s been long day here, rain, rain and more rain, hard water levels but girls kayaked very good…. Palm’s Katya Kulkova made Finals in 4th with a good score of 353, Palm’s Anne Hübner got an impressive 1st with 450, GB’s Claire O’hara also made it in 2nd with 390.

In mens we seemed to struggle more than girls Scores were lower than prelims, the best one was GB’s James Weight in 1st with 626, 2nd Ryan Liquorish with 610 and me in 3rd with 550. Bartosz Czauderna got 4th and Paul Meylahn 5th.

Many paddlers were very close to making the cut, there wasn’t much between us really, feel very lucky to be in the final with such inconsistant levels.

Sunday Finals:

The Plattling Eurocup is all over. incredibly tough water levels today made for a very tough final.

Mens was desevedly won with a great ride for the level of 600 points by Paul Meylahn from Germany, 2nd was Bartosz Czauderna 3rd was me Less than 100 points (one move) separated the top 3.

Womens was won by GB’s Claire O’hara with 276, 2nd was Nina Csonkova with 206, and 3rd my lovely wife Katya Kulkova with 190, all paddled very well considering the difficulty of the hole at this level.German paddlers did very well winning all but 2 categories…

Congrats all winners and those who came close and a big thanks to all the organisers!