Prague - women's event

It is STILL raining!! Everything is wet: my kit, my towel, my clothes...brrrrr!  Thankfully the competition for me has been a lot more positive than the weather. The ladies were up this morning with a lot of heats! I was in the last one and it seemed to take forever before I was on (I've recently been used to just 3 or 4 heats, but there were 6 today). I had a really good first ride getting a whole bunch of clean ends - 13 apparently (6 moves), I'm not quite sure where they came from as I hadn't been getting that many in practice and I think the look on my face when I'd done them probably proved that! A loop and a split-wheel as well meant I was through to the semis in 2nd place behind Emily Jackson. 

We spent the afternoon eating crepes and avoiding the rain so I'm not sure what happened in the men's quarter finals - though the results were Nick Troutman 1st, Peter Csonka 2nd, Mathieu 3rd and EJ 4th. Ed Smith also did a good job making the semis in 7th. 

The women were on in the semis late afternoon and as I was one of the last up I once again tried not to watch anyone else's rides, so it wouldn't put me off. My first ride was OK but not great, but I managed to get a whole load of moves in my second including an air loop and loop and some cleans (again - good stuff!) giving me 400 points and first place! In our team training sessions leading up to events we always work towards precise moves to leave the judges in no doubt and to get it scored (the judging is strict in the UK!) so a 'clean' 400.00 (rather than .33) meant my moves were spot on so the judges were all in agreement. Emily Jackson was just behind me, Jutta Kaiser was 3rd, Ruth Gordon 4th and Adrienne (from US, sorry can't remember her last name) 5th. 

A clean slate tomorrow for finals though so we'll see what happens and I have the pressure of going last up (again!). In the meantime we are hoping for a little less rain for the men's night time semis which start in less than an hour. We are also hoping for less rain so that the feature doesn't go up any more and get more flushy, which has been happening since yesterday morning. 

Hopefully I'll take some photos tomorrow, it was far too miserable today. 

....I'm not sure drinking beer, because it is cheaper than soft drinks, is a good thing...I better find my water.