Thun - ladies heats

I have updated www.ukfreestyle.com with what has been happening in the rest of the competition. Yesterday was the ladies heats. I was grateful of an early heat, as that meant I could then watch the rest of the ladies paddling (I hate watching when I am yet to paddle).

My rides were OK - a couple of blunts (thankfully I found my edges 2 days before the competition and started mainly gettting blunts (left) instead of roundhouses) and clean spins, but no where near the level of the top ladies. Ruth Gordon, Emily Jackson, Mariann Saether and Tanya Faux were the ones to beat yesterday - mainly they were just getting verticality and/or air on every move front and back, but there were a few big moves being thrown as well. It looked like Ruth nailed a donkey flip; Mariann, a felix; Tanya, a huge pan-am and Emily has been consistent in getting flip turns and flashbacks.

Because of my early heats I could cheer on fellow Brits Emily Wall and Lowri Davies. Emily got a nice back stab, but then caught an edge and flushed early, but she had a good final ride which put her through to the next round in 13th place. Lowri was really unlucky with the wave totally greening out as she went to catch it on her first ride, this seemed to put her off in the next 3 rides as she had several more unlucky flushes and therefore didn't make it into the top 20 cut.

This year we have had the luxury of a quarter final - the first since the team sizes were reduced after Graz 2003, as there were 43 women. Now that I have already made top 10 (I was 9th yesterday), I would have preferred to go straight to a semi!

The online updates here are great - Emily W got a text from her mum in Bali telling her what heat she was in before she saw it being posted on the official noticeboard!

Well, I'm up again this afternoon, hoping for some verticality today!

(can't seem to upload any photos at the moment, will try again later :)