End of the championships!

Wow! What an emotional week! The competition has been fun, and great results for the Brits and me - 3rd place. Hooray! A place on the podium at last. We were hoping for Lynsey to be on there as well - 2 brits on the podium would have been amazing, but unfortunately she just missed out.

The finals were hard. The scores had been up and down all week, with lots of people getting really high scoring rides followed by a flushy, low-scoring and no variety rides. It was very difficult to be consistent on the feature. Ruth Gordan found this out in the semis - another strong paddler not making finals. I'd scraped into 4th place in the final, and felt lucky to be in there as I my rides were not great. Any of the top five could have got the top places and it was down to who pulled out the best rides at the right time. I had an awesome first ride with cartwheels both ways and a loop, getting me through the first round. My second ride was solid enough to get me into a medal position. Unfortunately both Tanya and Lynsey both flushed several times during their final rides and didn't get the scores that they had been getting during the week. Going into my third ride, I knew I was going to get at least a bronze - the pressure was now on to up that position. I watched Kristen have a solid ride of carthweels both ways so I knew I had to stay retentive. Well, I did stay retentive but only got left ends - I got stuck in the 'pit' and somehow managed a flurry of flat spins!! What was going on? I hadn't managed a single flat spin in the whole two weeks on the feature! I was desperately trying to get the boat vertical but it wasn't working, and I couldn't get the boat to the top of the pile to go for a loop. My score was read out - my lowest of the competition. Kristen and Jutta moved on to the next round, and I was left to contemplate the 'what if's' but, not for long. Hey, 3rd in the world - good!

I hate competing in knockout finals - my nerves can't cope, and often it's not always the best paddler that wins, and although it's the nature of the competition, I don't like to see people advance due to others flushing or having a bad ride. However, in this final, Jutta showed she was the best paddler in each round - she performed consistently under the pressure and she also got the highest scoring ride of the competition. She was getting vertical ends, cleans and super-cleans. Kristen from the U.S consistently got vertical as well, getting her the silver place in her first (I think) World Championships. Nice one!

The rest of the day was nearly as tiring as my final - emotions were going up and down when each Brit performed in EVERY final. Arrrgggh. The british support was awesome. As is always the way - some came away very happy, others disappointed, but as a team we produced the best results ever.

I am now getting ready for 5 weeks in NZ, can't wait.

Monday - the week of the worlds

I haven't updated for a while. Lots of things going on. Took a day off on Saturday to see the sights of Sydney, I think I was more tired walking around than I would have been paddling!

Training has been going well. On Sunday the course was really quiet for most of the day. When I was paddling there were only 3 or 4 other people in the eddy - I think lots of people took the day/weekend off boating and took the opportunity to have a break and do some touristy things.

On Sunday night our team training consisted of a mock competition, with 2 runs each. This gave us a good chance to work out which eddy we mainly flushed into (no one got a full 45 seconds on both rides) and where the fastest route up the eddy was! We also had a taste of Muppet's judging, a few people were disappointed that some of their moves were not scoring - blunts seemed to be particularly hard to get scored, mainly because it is difficult to get out of the pile and get the angle. Watching the video we could see what we needed to do to score the moves (easy to think about when you're sat on a chair watching!).

I've not really taken the opportunity to watch other's rides. However, I did notice the huge air that EJ has been getting on his loops - very few paddlers are getting as much air. The British men are all paddling well, although from last nights session they have realised that they need to fully complete the move, and get more angle on their cartwheels to get the score.

In the junior ladies Jak and Jenny are both getting good rides - Jak pulled off a load of right hand cartwheels in her first ride last night, which she is hoping to repeat in the heats on Thursday. Jenny has been consistently cartwheeling and getting some nice split wheels. Their main competition will be Emily Jackson, who has also been consistently cartwheeling with the occasional blunt.

Only 2 more training sessions before the men's heats start on Wednesday. I'm going to be up on Thursday.

Flea.

Wednesday 19th Jan

Have been in OZ since Sun, just about recovering from the jet lag - although I was asleep by 9.30pm last night and wide awake at 6.30am this morning. That works out well though as our training sessions have been earlyish morning.

In true weather witch stylee it got cold as soon as I got out here. But has now warmed up and is a scorcher today!! (Although, I think I prefered it yesterday when it was cooler).

We've had a couple of team training sessions now. They have gone well, but there is never enough time - we have split the team (we are also with the Swedish team for practice) into two groups and have half an hour for each group, this allows for quicker time between each ride, but half hour isn't that long to get moves sorted out. I've been working on my loops, and managed to get a couple of good ones today but the hole is really fast and more often than not I'm tumbling the loop and falling over! I was watching some of my competition today - Lynsey is getting some good entry moves (although she is still working on sticking them every time). Tanya faux (Aus) is getting really strong rides with blunts both ways, loops and lots of cartwheels. Not many people are getting scoring blunts as it seems hard to get out of the pile, and get enough angle without flushing.

All the brits are liking the hole - it's nice to be able to go into a feature and not worry about getting a trashing (as in Graz). The eddys are good as well so if you do flush you can go straight back into the feature without wasting too much time - hopefully this will make people go for more adventurous moves without needing to 'spin to win'.

Flea


(thanks to Rew, Dan and Blokey for the techie updated bits on the website!)

The Flea has Landed

A tired and weary Flea landed in Sydney after a day of travelling via Japan and went straight onto the course for a paddling session....that's dedication!
I'm sure Flea will update personally when a suitable internet cafe is found.

Cam