Home sweet home

I've been back in Tauranga this week after a heavy week of racing at the National Championships. This week I've been relaxing, letting my body recover before another heavy block of training before heading to Europe.

Things are getting a bit colder and ugly now with a lot of rain hitting the Bay of Plenty, meaning there's  flood runs up the Kaimais. To see a video of some decent sized drops in the runs visit, Cole's facebook page.

Ben Browns Video of the Wainui..



I've finally finished planning my trip to Europe this year, which will involve an itinerary as follows.. Flyout the 20th June heading to Paris via Singapore. The first race I will compete at is the 2nd World Cup at L'Argentiere, France. It's a natural course with is quite wide with quite a few waves and and small features. After L'Argentiere, I will head to Markkleeberg, Germany to compete at the 3rd World Cup. Markkleeberg hosted the Junior and Under 23 European Championships in 2010. It is apparently an awesome course, artificial, with a lot of features. With a bit of a break before the teen cups I'm sure I'll find some courses and countries to go to.


The first teen cup is held in Bratislava, Slovakia, the course which will be hosting the Senior World Championships for 2011, an Olympic selection race with London next year. Bratislava is a very impressive course and is home to some of the biggest stars in Canoe Slalom. The next three races are held in Liptovsky Mikulas, Tacen (host of World Championships 2010), and Solkan. All the teen cups and in Slovakia and Slovenia, meaning travel shouldn't be too difficult! I will go to see the relatives in Scotland, before heading off to the World Championships (as a spectator) to watch the Kiwi's race and try secure an Olympic spot for London 2012!

Video of the Courses above:

Bratislava
Markkleeberg
L'Argentiere
Solkan
Tacen
Liptovsky Mikulas

New Zealand National Championships finished

Over the past week NZ has had the secondary school champs and the national champs. It was some tight and interesting racing with titles being regained and lost by many athletes.

Ben Gibb and I were the course designers at the secondary schools, setting a pretty long course for this type of race, with the fastest time being a 94 by U16 paddler, Finn Butcher. Cole O'connor Stratton took out the U18 K1M title, which was great to see a Boys' College paddler winning it. Robert 'Foxy' Hervey won the Phil Dooney trophy which is awarded to the best overall Under 18 paddler at the event. Congratulations to all these guys.

Video of the people at secondary school champs,


New Zealand Secondary Schools 2011 from Callum Gibb on Vimeo.

The nationals took place on the saturday and sunday which contingents from Australia and Cook Islands. The weather decided to rain after beautiful weather for the SS's. The race went on and was a great course, set by Ian Mercer. The Pre'nationals for me went pretty well, I didn't have the fastest runs, but I was consistent doing two 73 second runs (very short course for day 1). My second run had potential to be faster, when I did a sweep up in gate 10 and hit a rock dropping my edge, the frustrating thing about paddling in Kawerau! Warwick Draper took out the race with a 70.5 clean, ahead of Aaron Osborne and Mike Dawson respectively.


Video of my second run at pre nationals,


Untitled from Callum Gibb on Vimeo.

Nationals was a new day, and the day that counted for the National titles and placings. The course was changed, and made around 15 seconds longer, for run times around the 85 second mark. First runs, I had a clear head of what to do on the course except for one move, gates 13 - 14. My first run was off at 9.15am meaning I didn't have much time to sort out what to do, with demonstration runs commencing at around 8.30am.. I went down the course doing the top fairly nicely, a few errors here and there. I got to gate 13 and struggled to get to the upstream 14 loosing time going low.. From there on, it didn't go well, stopping the boat in all the last three ups, and feeling pretty shattered at the bottom. I wasn't very happy with the run, but looked for improvement on my second run. Results said I had a 2 second penalty, but after an enquiry and protest with Chief Judge, Murray Arnold, I got it off. I was feeling good for second runs, sun had come out and was ready to throw it down. My top was great nailing the moves until I got to the 13 - 14 move.. I went low again and touched the next three gates consecutively.. It was all over for second runs. Luckily it was enough to take the win ahead of Carl Whitehead and Laurence Brown.


Congratulations to Ben Gibb who took out the C1 M and the C2 M with Cole O'Connor Stratton. K1M senior goes to Mike Dawson and K1W senior went to Luuka Jones.

A huge thank you to everyone who helped out at the event with results, organizing, judges and runners (Annette).

National Championships

The New Zealand National Championships are coming up next weekend and I am not feeling fully prepared! My training was going real good, until I got a cold this week meaning I'm unable to train, trying to get rid of it before the race.

Anyway, the race should be awesome with 100's of competitors from all over New Zealand. Secondary Schools Championships start this week on tuesday, where me and Ben will make the course for the race and do demonstration runs, should be interesting!

At nats, i'm doing teams runs with Aaron and Andy, so hopefully we can take out the Open Mens category! Would be pretty cool to do so! For results of the race and information visit www.slalomnz.org.nz

I tried out my new GOPRO today and took some pretty cool shots (Images and video) will upload the video asap! Check out the pics.

HELLO GOPRO!

I just got a GOPRO camera the other day, one of the most amazing and fun tools for photos and video. I'm planning on making some videos etc in NZ and with my trips to Europe this year. There waterproof ability allows you to use them on your boat helmet, anywhere. Here's a video from 12 Productions, which in some shots uses a camera similar. Check it out.

Twelve Productions - Just Water from Twelve Productions on Vimeo.