World Kayak Event Coverage

Teams and paddlers from 30+ countries arrived at Augsburg, Germany this week to begin training for the second stop on the World Cup circuit. With Prague playing host to a Euro paddler victory, much of the continent is all fired up for more of the same. Canadians and Americans are now dusting off from a tough Prague event and are focused on dialing in the German freestyle feature. .. an amazing hole/wave that hosted many of the top moves!

The big news of the week were some health issues to some of the favorites. Travel and the occasional bacteria set a toll on some of the US paddlers with Emily and Dane Jackson feeling the squeemish and being mostly bed ridden. EJ and gang set their sights on taking home the top spots and were common sites at the prelims. Today was a long day with 17 heats of Men’s K1s, as well as C1 Prelims, and K1 Junior Prelims.

The C1ers took to the waves with some very impressive scores. Markus Hummel found his way to just over 560 points to take top spot in the prelims with Czech Stepan Fiedler taking second and German Philipp sHitzigrad howing how the hometown boys do it right. There was only one North American paddler in this class, Dane Jackson, who finished just below the cut line at 11th. Indeed the only Non-German or Czech paddlers in the finals will be the French duo of Jonathan Suc and Alexandre Besseau .

The Juniors hit the ground running with some amazing scores. The international flavor was even more apparent with strong showing from Spanish, Polish, French, German, US, and Swiss paddlers holding top 10 spots. Serrasolses Aniol of Spain surprised the pack with a 770, a score that would be hard to beat in any of the day’s heats. US took the two next spots with Jonathan Shales and Jason Craig making it a 2-3 punch. This was a TIGHT race, the finals will be amazing to watch!

The womens heats saw only one or two familiar faces at the top, with now favorite, Canadian Ruth Gordon with 707 point rides and Emily Jackson in Fourth. Ruth’s ride was close to double the others in this competition leaving no doubt who was to be beat! Nina Halassova of Sweden came second with 487 points with Marlene Devillez of France rounding out the top of this field.

The early heats saw Dustin Urban pull and early lead with 1,300+ points from the USA. In the next heat, Stephen Wright killed it with two solid rides that outscored most of the class’s combined scores to get a 1,600+ point score. EJ was next in heat 4 and got two scores in the 700’s to get a 1,506 point score, putting the USA in 1st, 2nd, and 3rd until heat 12. In heat 12 Peter Czonka nailed his first ride with zero mistakes to get a 900+ point ride. His second ride was much lower but high enough to edge out EJ for the second place position in prelims with a 1534. The rides are quite varied in what moves people are doing making this competition anything but repetitive!

This day definitely set the stage for the Semi’s as all classes started to show the ‘person to beat’. Peter Czonka, Ruth Gordon lead the way into the finals on a great dynamic freestyle feature!

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