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.

RAAB Paddles

I'm now the distributor for RAAB paddles in New Zealand. RAAB is a Czech brand and is used by many international stars, Peter Kauzer, Jana Dukatova, Elena Kaliska and many more. There paddles come in all shapes and sizes to suit your paddling style.

The paddles are feather light, but remain strong due to there new technology and high flexibility. If your interested in seeing the paddles specifications you can find them on www.raab-paddles.com. If you have any questions or queries feel free to email me and ask callumgibb@hotmail.com.

Australian Open

 I arrived in Sydney, Australia on the 6th of February along with my brother Ben and the Whiteheads. Was just as expected, 30 - 40 degrees, which might sound nice, but trust me it's not. 

We picked up our Ford Falcon hatchback which quickly recieved a nickname 'The Bogan'. Arriving in Penrith, we went for an afternoon session learning the course. Training from there in was pretty similar each day. 830 or 730 am trainings and an afternoon session every second day. 

Lukasz Polyaczk arrived on the 9th and stayed with us from there on. The week before the oz open, we laid off the training and relaxed, going to the blue mountains and doing what there is to do in penrith, paddle and go to the mall... The race came around. 1st runs I went down the course offline battling to get back on line alot of the time doing a 102 + 6.

 Next run I focused on not going fast and just staying online. I knew this wasn't going to be an amazing time, but was a  learning curve. I did a 102 + 0 and was effortless compared to my first run. It shows what I need to work on over the winter to prepare fully for Europe and America this year. 

 I finished 50th Senior Men and 2nd Junior. Which just goes to show how hard the senior category is, something to look forward to next year!

Selections all over

Mangahou put on some pretty decent weather for the last selection races, with no rain which is unusual for the gorge. The race was really well organized and was a Oceania Championships, ICF ranking race and NZ selection race.The 3rd and 4th selection races for me had some ups and downs! In order to make the senior team I had to step my racing up a notch. The first day I went down the course with a really good plan for my run. Instead I was thinking about my pace instead of my lines I ended up going straight past the 2nd gate.. Not really what I had planned..

2nd runs I decided to throw it down. The top of my run 1-13 went really well preparing for all the staggers and doing some pretty decent upstreams. Towards the bottom things started to get average finishing in 11th place overall against the international field with paddlers from Canada all over Europe and Australia, I was pretty pleased. I ended up 3rd in the NZ seniors. That night I went home pretty pleased with my placing. Then I calculated the points and realized I had to win the seniors to make the team... I kind of wish I didn't realize this since it was all that was on my mind. I turned up to the race feeling the pressure, it showed in my first run. I went down the course off line in most of the moves, muscling my way back on line, crabbing down the course. I finished in 12th position which is a pretty good placing, but with the run I just had I knew I could of done a lot better. Second runs was the last run and chance to make the senior team. I wasn't feeling the pressure which isn't what I like, I wasn't focused on the race my mind was all over the place.. I touched the first up made errors but finished it off coming 3rd again as the other senior blew out as well but worse.

I was still 1st Junior team member for the 3rd year in a row, 4th year in the team. I finished 2nd in the junior category behind Czech star Jiri Prskavec. I also took out the Junior Oceania Champion for the second year in a row so showing a solid start to year! Bring on Australia..

The best three in each category are in the Senior Team and the top six for Juniors as it is only a Pre-World Championships for 2011 held in Wassau, America.

New Zealand Senior Team

K1 Men

Aaron Osborne

Johann Roozenburg

Mike Dawson

Myself 4th boat

K1 Women

Luuka Jones

Louise Jull

Nikki Whitehead

C1 Men

Brent Bastin

Shaun Higgins

Ben Gibb

New Zealand Junior Team

K1 Men

Callum Gibb

Carl Whitehead

Finn Butcher

Robert Hervey

Cole O’connor Stratton

Laurence Brown