NZ Summer

The New Zealand summer has been great!! We have had awesome sunny weather the whole season, but unfortunately most of the rivers were dry.

This year my older sister took the journey oversees to see where I spend my European winter each year. Together with Mike Dawson and Kathrin Bickel we have been exploring the whole of New Zealand in prime conditions. My sister flew back in the beginning of March and since then I have been paddling a fair bit of slalom together with Katrhin and Mike.

Over Easter we raced the NZ Slalom National Champs in Kaweau. Kathrin raced slalom 6 years ago, with the NZ nationals being her last race. This made us both decided to enter and give the race our best shot ;). I had my first slalom experience in 2011 on the Kaituna river here in New Zealand and enjoyed this challenging new discipline. I haven’t been able to practice a lot of slalom since than but I have enjoyed my time in a slalom boat heaps.

The racing over the weekend was great! Both days I had pretty sweet runs, with only a couple touches and little mistakes. On Saturday I ended up in second in the Pre-Nationals and on Sunday I managed to get in third, with seven seconds behind NZ Olympic paddler Luuka Jones in first. Young Australian Kate Eckhardt became second.

Soon I’m heading off for another holiday trip to Vanuatu before the Northern Hampshire racing season starts.