Freestyle Selections 2009

The selection for this years Great British Freestyle kayak team was three events held over the past two months. The first two were held up at Nottingham, at the Holme Pierrepoint white water course. The third was held at Hurley. These events, for anyone that doesn’t know, were to select the British team for this years Europeans that are being held in Austria.

The first event was held at Twin Waves, the new feature below the inlet gate. In training before the event, I had been confident on the wave and was able to stick spins and shuvits both ways consistently. However, they had changed the feature just before the event, making it a lot stickier and harder to paddle. Both the senior and junior men did amazingly on it, with Pringle scoring 1100 points in one ride! It was a lot harder for the junior and senior women. Most of the junior women spent most of their runs getting stuck in the bouncy bit of the hole. This definitely wasn’t my best event and I came joint 3^rd.

The second event, also at HPP, was on the new feature Tardis. I had never properly paddled it until a few weeks before the event. I trained hard on it and was, again, feeling confident, as with Twin Waves – the feature was ‘tweaked’ before the competition, this time using a picture of the hole in Austria to try and simulate the actual competition.

It was freezing cold on the competition day. I was even colder because I’d, cleverly, left my skullcap and shoes at home. I paddled my best and came 2^nd, with Gabby Bates getting 1^st. The cold water was obviously discouraging any swimmers. Even the OC1’s managed to stay in their boats!

The third and final selection event was held at my favourite place, Hurley. Since it had only come in the week before selections, no one had managed to get much practice. The feature was on a flushy two gates, both of which were a strange sort of hole. As there were only three junior girls competing at this event, we were on and off the cold water quickly. The judging was very harsh (they’d say strict!) with two of my spins not scoring. In the end I came first in this event, which I was very pleased with.

This means I’ve come second overall in selections and will be going to the Europeans this summer as part of team GB!

The full team listing can be found here:

http://www.ukfreestyle.com/articles.php?id=405

That’s all for now. A massive well done to everyone who made the team. I’ll now be taking a quick break from freestyle over winter to do a bit of river running, before coming back to train for the Europeans when it gets warmer.

See you on the river

Tasha