Over the past weekend the first of the four Teen Cup races commenced at Bratislava, a famous course for it's three metre drop at the bottom and hosting World Cups, European Championships and the World Championships later this year in September.
The course for qualifications was quite basic and simple from the river bank, but proved to be more difficult than expected for myself. Things were going good on first runs, online and smoothly through the top section until loosing an edge around gates 7 and 8, going low into up 8. Things weren't so smooth from there on in, with my lines being off and silly mistakes left me in 12th place after 1st runs.
I went over my run and had a plan with open lines, ensuring I would have a solid run to qualify for the semi-finals. Everything went good, open lines and the boat was running. At the upstream 12, I got grated along the wall loosing sometime, I kept online, but once again, I caught an edge on my booth further down the course, completely stopping, thinking I had to push hard and nail the next couple of upstreams proved costly, with a simple mistake causing a re-circ (paddle back for a gate) loosing 6 - 7 seconds. I pushed hard to the finish line, to have a slower time. It was a nervous wait but I was into the semi-finals in 18th place...
Sunday was a new day, a clean slate. The course designed by Marcel Potocny (Slovakian Team Member) was a really awesome course, with moves using numerous features down the course. I was looking forward to racing on the course for semi's and hopefully finals. A rough start to my run, getting offline again, followed by a solid middle section, was looking solid. An error, due to ducking a downstream gate costed a low entry to the 3rd upstream, pushing it to the finish and staying composed I wasn't pleased with my run at all. Surprisingly, alot of paddlers blew out and made even larger mistakes, leaving me in 5th place, going into the final (top 10) chasing Carl Whitehead of NZ, in 4th place.
I was feeling the pressure for the final, but was also stoked to have made it. I reviewed my race and had a solid plan of attack, I set off down the course, to get a touch on the first gate..not the biggest confidence booster for the rest of the run but managed to stay composed. No major errors, but 3 small issues, caused for numerous seconds lost in the upstream and 3 touches overall meant no podium for myself. I placed 5th overall, not too disappointing but just goes to show the consequences of penalties!
However, team mate and training partner, Carl Whitehead of NZ stayed reasonably clean and composed to finish in 3rd place behind Slovenian and Czech Republic athletes. An awesome result.
We're now in Liptovsky Mikulas for the 2nd Teen Cup race this weekend, a gypsy area some people have found out the hard way already..
Will keep you updates on racing and results, Ciao for now
