Me approaching an upstream in the qualifications of the World Cup
Team Mascot
From the sunny blue sky, and hot days in Athens we flew to the snow and hail of Augsburg, Germany a large city 1 hour west of Munich. And yes I did say snow. We found ourselves in the middle of a cold snap, apparently very strange in Germany at this time of year where one morning it snowed which was followed by hail while we were biking to the course to train. Out came our long sleeve paddle jackets that we didn’t think we would get to use here. The weather did not improve at all while we were in Germany and probably was colder than what it has been back at home.
However, this was definitely the one place in Europe where I feel very at home. We stayed with the Schmidt family who are some really nice welcoming German people. Caught up with a few people which was great.
I had a really good feeling going into this race and really apart from a timing error on the last gate of my second run over the weekend I had a reasonable race in Augsburg. I was a little put off in my first run where the paddler before me did not turn up for their race run. I thought they would run the paddler as a ghost and I would paddle the next minute in my start time but 10 seconds before the minute they called me over and wanted me to go. I told them I was waiting for the minute and got yelled at in German. This wasn’t the best way to get into the zone for this first run. I had three silly brush touches that put me back a few seconds after first runs but it was nice and solid with some very good boat positioning. During my second run, I pulled out another very fast split until gate 13 where I got a touch. I was in form to make the final (to be held Sunday) but got too much pre turn into the last upstream and surfed the large hole and ended up getting a 50 second penalty putting me in 50th place. This was very disappointing for me as that 50 on the last gate on my second run was all that held between the finals. A small timing error on a gate I had done well all week.
I have had a couple of days now to just think properly about the race and really when I think about it some good things have come out of the race. I now need to know I need to lean forward slightly more, work on big strokes after holes and really pace my strokes which I will work in the few weeks I have leading up to the world Championships in Prague.
The other kiwis had some varying results. Sarah 49th, Mike 72nd, Jarad 55th, Mark 50th Johann 67th, and Tania 40th. Tania was the only one that made finals so I decided to stay and train an extra two days in Augsburg and support her while Sarah, Mike, Jarad and Johann went to spain and got a few more sessions ion the white water than the other teams. After the final Tania was 36th overall.
That’s to Claudia, Max, Lothar, Ute, Oma and Opa for letting some of us stay with them. We had an awesome time there getting into the German culture again.
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