Summer Tour-Italy

Apologies there has been no updates for a while! I have been a little bit poorly :)

Summer Team Tour

We started the tour in the well-known area of Val Sesia, Italy. This area offers loads of great class 5 white water, and is usually sunny as well! Unfortunately this year was slightly different and alas, no, or very little sun.

Still we had a fantastic time, The Gene17 events were super well organized with team Pyranha finishing 3^rd in the Team Alpine sprint, with me finishing 5^th individually which after the winter I have had I was extremely happy with.

We also got lots of new rivers done which a few, have made it firmly in to my favorites, of the area at least.

The Middle Semenza proved its self to be a fantastic lower volume run with lots of little drops and technical rapids. In addition to this you can run down in to the Lower Semenza, which offers a less continuous Fairy Glen type rapid.

The Sorba slides also proved them selves worthy of a little excitement, but the best moment of the week has to be running Devils slide with Cookie! Its such a great feeling being in the gorge and to make it even better the first drop when you get in, is a supper boof on to a huge cushion, and then a tight right hand turn, which feels amazing!

The top boof (Angels Boof) 

The drop its self is pretty cool, with 2 distinct sections with a bit of a hole in the middle then a big pool at the end which is a good 100feet below where you initially scout, and film from.

Half way down the Devils Slide

Cookie and I celebrating a successful decent

We are now in Slovinia with Positive Sport, it has apparently been raining for weeks here, so its time to have breakfast, go paddling and scout some more lesser known drops ;) 


Cheers,
David

2012

So 2012 is over so a quick reflection....

Selection didnt go so well, along with the first part of my season with silly penalties showing that I had some good times but not in the game mentally....

Had a great time in France and Spain making my first world ranking race final!

Did really well in some creek races, got a 2nd decent and paddled RM on the mawddach

Came 2nd in the british open...

Got Weils desease paddling some amazing flood waves on the trent, Then recovered from weils and its now 2013 :) Bring it on :)

Sicklines

As the end of the race season comes about for both Slalom and Extreme racing, the Sickline Extreme World Champs Commences in the small town of Otztal, Austria.

For this trip my self and the Italy race team, Tom Wakling, Jen Chrimes and Joe Morley drove to Austria.

The course this year had an added challenge of a new hole, at the bottom of the TNT rappid above champions killer, which was imaginitvly names by Sickline officials 'Champions Killer - 1' At the start of the week the river was fairly high pushing around 200 on the gauge. Lots of people getting beat downs and being cartwheeled, looped for a fair while. 

As we got closer to race day, the river dropped back to a normal level yet this hole still proved to be a challenge for many competitors causing top races such as Michele Ramazza to not qualify.

My self, Joe and Jen Qualified in to the top 48 and in to the Wellabrucke Rounds.

I had a really good qualification round putting me in the top 26 for the penultimate round which i was really happy about. Joe also had a good run qualifying. In the next round I was unfortunately paired up with Vavra Hradilek who beat me. Joe had a really good run qualifying in to the super final.

The End results had Jen Chrimes getting a silver medal, My self finishing in 19th, and Joe in 15th.

This was a massive improvement on last year :) Super stoked for next years race!

David

Teva Outdoor Games – Valchiusella

Week before last my self, Tom Wakling, Joe Morley and Jen Chrimes headed out to Northen Italy for the 2012 Teva Kayak Race.

We went out a week in advance to train on the course and of course paddle some other rivers.

On arrival we met up with the Pyranha Team van being driven by Anton Immler and Andy Butler. Our first day was spent on the Chiusella paddling the whole run not knowing which part would be in the race. I immediately liked the style of the river with small technical drops allowing pacey sprints in between.

The following days were spent doing more training on the Chiusella as well as running the Atassa River in the next valley along. This was a really nice run with more technical drops than the Chiusella and a big 200foot slide to finish the run. The photogenic bridges over the river again amazed me as to how they still stand up, and how an earth they managed to built them so symmetrically across the steep gorges.

Coming to race day I felt I knew the race course well, and with low levels felt confident that my light weight would be an advantage for this run.

My first run left me in a strong top ten position but with aggregate scoring I knew I would have to do a good second run as well. My second run turned out to be 4 seconds quicker than the first putting me in a solid placing.

Next day was the team events. First we had the creek race which was held on a lower section of the river. Predominantly flat with 2 main drops, however these drops turned out more difficult than expected. I made a mistake on the first drop that cost the team some time however we picked up the pace and nailed the final drop finishing in second place behind the Kewi team. The Team slalom was held in the evening, where My self, tom and Joe raced as the GB representatives.  We had some issues on the first run, but so did everyone else.  Our second run was great, and finished us in first place and first place over all in the team event.

On the last day of racing we had the Individual sprint slalom and Boater X races. I again finished in a solid top half position with my second run including a role! Over all this put me in Tenth place, a position I am happy with being my second international extreme race!

We still had 2 more days in Italy before heading home so we went to Valseisia to run some more rivers. Without a guide book we really had no idea where to paddle so we got on and inspected each drop well.

All in all I had a fantastic trip, and it was great to see Andy and Anton out there whilst on the Team tour.

Cheers,

David