On Saturday june the 5th, myself and the rest of the british team set of for italy.
We eventually arrived at our destination, (ivrea slalom course) midday on the sunday, and with excitement rushed over to see the venue we would be carrying out the majority of our races on. we then spent the afternoon settling in finding our bearings and a training session on the course, first impressions showed a fun but very pushy course and our first Italien cuisine was a visit to the golden arches.
later that day more competitors started arriving and it was a gd chance for us to check out the opposition, we soon found the standard to be extremely high and we were up against some phenominal athletes.
The next morning we set of up the mountains to the Val Chiusella the home of the individual long race, the team long race and the king of the falls supersprint. The next few days we would spend studying and learning the fastest lines down the race section,
The Val chiusella turned out to be a fantastic river and lived up to my memories , providing a testing and technical race course where carrying speed would be vital.
The day of the race soon arrived and all 3 of the british team was off in the first half of the draw and Rich was off first off and flew down the seal launch and rapidly went out of sight, unfortunately things didnt go to plan for rich and he finished in a much slower time than he was capable of.
Will was of next and soon raced off out of sight.
off 5, 4, 3 ,2 , 1 and I’m off i flew down the seal launch hit the bottom and charged away, and within seconds I’ve eddied out, oops, back out and pushing hard to make up time. Things went smooth for the mid section of the race. As I pushed hard little mistakes were creeping in and became more frequent as I began to tire, on the final slide I took a flip and pinned against a boulder, fortunately I managed to climb up the rock and carry on to the end.
Will had the fastest time of the Brits followed by myself and Rich was just behind,
After this was the team long race, and unfortunately we finished bottom end of the table.
we soon moved down to Ivrea our base for the next few days, the home of the next few races. In the sprint Will and Rich both moved up the table, while I had a very disapointing result and posted the 2 slowest times of the day, with one of my runs including a surf in the bottom hole, just metres from the finish line.
The final event was the extreme slalom, this was to be carried out to international slalom rules, and was to take place in reverse order so I was one of the first off, I’d decided to take the course slow and safe after my disaster in the sprint. I got the 1st run clean and it turned out to be a reasonable time, placing me mid table, Rich also got a clear run on the steep tricky course, Will unfortunately missed a gate along with a lot of other athletes.
With a clear run under my belt I had nothing to loose and all to gain so set off quickly and all was going well and smooth, unfortunately I went low on the 2nd from last gate and this cost me some time, but still managed to knock a few seconds of my time and move higher up the table. Rich was unable to improve on his 1st run and Will took a roll and again missed a gate.
With these results in I was placed in 59th, Rich had moved to 61st and Will had dropped to 63rd, these results would not change as none of us were lucky enough to get through the Chinese sprint.
The British girls both performed well and showed they could mix it with the best women in the world, and Jen Chrimes came away with a well deserved Bronze medal and a slightly dented melvin!
The Teva extreme out door games was a fantastic expereince and to witness the speed and skill of the top paddlers in the world was truelly awesome and left us all feeling inspired and keen to return and do better next year.
Heres to 2011
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