Racing

Friday- Race of Olympic Hopefuls
We met at the course at 8am. It was already very hot and the wind was a problem.
First off was Ella, who never quite paddled to her potential. There was a tricky, tight stagger from gates 7 to 9, that caught out many paddlers. Ella almost nailed the move but had to recirc and never quite recovered her composure. She finished 47th, with only the top 25 going into finals.
The final was won by the Czech paddler Kudejova in a time of 210.42, in fact 4 of the top 8 were Czechs.
Tom was the first of the K1 men and he had a run he was very happy about, with his name on the leader board in 2nd place for ages. He qualified 25th
Eric was a little slow to start, had a small mistake with a touch, but then got into a good rhythm and did well on the second half, but it was a little too late and he had a 103.07, missed the cut and finished 42nd.
Tom was consistent and finished with a 203.54 in 24th place. The K1 men won by Zazuki Yazawa from Japan at 181.91 with our Swiss friend who brings chocolate, Guillaume Bandelier, 2nd with 185.80.
The field of 17 C2’s , consisted of 4 Czechs pairs and was to be cut to 10 for the final. Brent and Shaun started well but also missed the tricky stagger and paddled back up for it. Further down the course another recirc and too many touches left them in 10th, sneaking into the final.
They finished 10th in the final on 331.68 with the winners Karlovsky & Jane from Czech having a time of 210.42.
Teams runs were lots of fun and Ella buddied up with Maddie Toms and Ali Burrows, from across the ditch, who had had similar runs to Ella. All three of them nailed the stagger and other tricky bits in the 2 teams runs wishing they had paddled like that for the first runs. The boys pulled out to save their energy for tomorrow. We arrived back at 7pm so a very long day.
Tommorrow is the main event with a new course, so here’s hoping everyone paddles to their best potential.It is hard to believe the trip is drawing to a close, but a great way to finish. It is a buzz at the course, with lots of noise and people. Heaps of Aussies are over here supporting and with our new friends there is always someone to watch or cheer for.

Race day prep

photos of course, teams getting boats scrutineered and one of the Iranian team

Team meeting today, bib allocation and the course set for tommorrow.

The first race is the Race of Olympic Hopefuls- 99 K1 M, 62 K1 W and 17 C2's

Ella will be the first off at 10.50am, after the C1 men category. Next Tom then Eric and then C2.

This first race is sudden death with only 30 K1 M, 25 K1 W, 10 C2 going through for a finals run.

There is a teams race which we hopefully have a boys team with Shaun racing with Tom and Eric. If accepted Ella will race with 2 Aussies girls.

Will be a good pre race before the main event. Team all feeling good, the sun shone all day and it was still 27 at 8pm tonight. Lucky we arent from Iran as their team girls have to be totally covered even with traditional head gear under their helmets.

race results should be available on http://www.results.cz/ as their van was parked there today.

Meeting other kiwis

The kiwi flatwater team of two plus their coach tracked us down at dinner last night.

Great to meet them and chat to fellow kiwis.

Weather

Hi all just to let you know that the very hot days seem to be over today, nice temp but a bit of a breeze swinging the gates around so that can stop. The team training slot is 11am, but we fitted an extra in last night and they were still paddling at 9.15pm.
Brent and Shaun missed it due to a boat repair not being dry so were up again at 6am training.
Trained with the Aussies today, so nice to catch up with them. If we can combine countries for teams Ella may race with 2 of their girls as they have 5 girls. Will find out at managers meeting tommorrow afternoon.

Just met the NZ flatwater team manager, Gavin, who is staying near our course as their World Champs are about 10km away in Racice. I thought they were a big team, but turns out to be Tom Yule from Mt Maunganui and Lisa Carrington from Whakatane. They race the same days as us so it is probably unlikely that we will see them race. They are in the fortunate position of having a stash of boats stored in Europe and Australia so dont have the boat transport hassles that we do. Lucky them!!!

cheers for now
Sue

Ella is racing for the Cook Islands

Some of you may be wondering why Ella Nicholas will have Cook Islands next to her name on the results sheet. Well here is the answer....
"An opportunity has arisen for Ella Nicholas to represent the Cook Islands at the World Championships for Canoe Slalom in Brazil in September. This has been in the pipeline for several months, but could not be confirmed earlier as the ICF had to affiliate the Cook Islands. This affiliation has now been provisionally approved and the Cook Islands has become member number 142 of the ICF.
Ella has dual nationality as her father is a Cook Islander who grew up there and came to NZ for schooling.
For Ella this means paddling for the Cook Islands at the Junior Pre Worlds, which in effect changes nothing for her as she is under the New Zealand team umbrella. Both the NZ and Australian Canoe Federations have a commitment to support developing nations in Oceania.
After much consideration Ella has decided to accept this offer that will not only benefit her paddling but will also add another country to the mix for the Oceania Continental Qualifying event for the Beijing Olympics."

View of course

Link for race info

http://www.sweb.cz/kanoerce/uvod-en.html

More photos

Maddie Toms from Oz, C2 boys checking the water clarity and Eric in skins to show his guns.

Photos from training today

Rest day

Today the team had a rest day- well away from the course. We went to Prague, which is only about 40 minutes away, the whole team, Kidda and Luuka came too.
We parked near the Prague course as it is a familiar tram ride into the middle of the city without the parking hassles. The trams run on an honesty system, but no one seems to check so is a very cost effective mode of transport.
We decided to visit an exhibition entitled ' Bodies' that Kidda had seen recently. It was quite amazing as there were over 20 real human bodies, that were from Chinese prisoners. A method of extracting all the water and replacing it with a synethetic polymer was used to preserve the soft tissue and muscles. Various systems and parts of the bosy were highlighted in different ways eg arteries, muscles, circulatory system. Hard to explain but if you google Bodies Exhibition Prague you will get a better idea. It was very educational and plus had a strong health message.
After a quick lunch we went our own ways with a meeting time back at the course. There was some pressure and urgency to buy gifts for loved ones at home so serious shopping was underway. Another very hot day and I arrived back at the course at the appropriate time, then Kidda and luuka but over an hour later still no sign of the others.
Eventually they arrived ( 90 minutes late) with a story... of course.... they got the tram in the wrong direction, had the scenic route to South Prague. the tram line finished, they got off and caught another back. All in all, 1 and a half hours on the tram, luckily it was a freebie!!!
Still smiling we went to another shopping centre and got glue for baot repair, more shopping and arrived back in Roudnice 8pm for another Pizzeria dinner.
Some new teams have arrived and we met the Italians and USA team at the Pizzeria.
The flat water world junior champs are about 10km away at Racice on the same dates so lots of flatwater paddlers staying at the same place as us.
Into nation training tommorrow and with are with the Aussies and Swedish teams at 11am. Hopefully we can squeeze another in at 7pm as it is not dark until 10pm. Very short night as it is daylight at 5am.
cheers to all in NZ, great getting messages and comments as to who is reading the blog. We really appreciate your support and interest.
Sue

A story of water.....

Day Two a water story…
On the second day God created water, and thank goodness we found water in Roudnice today.
Yesterday Eric, Tom and Ella went to the supermarket to buy water as we are very wary of drinking the Czech water. They struggled, but came back with 12 litre bottles of some ghastly undrinkable stuff. In the 37 deg heat it was all they could find so we had to persevere and down it.
After training yesterday I ventured to another supermarket- Tesco, and tried a bottle to check that it was the non fizzy variety (big black mark to buy the wrong stuff as everyone hates the bubbles) I loaded the trolley with 36 litre bottles and headed to the car. Loaded it all in and thought “ I’ll quench my thirst and check again I have the right stuff. Yuk it was fizzy so back into the trolley it went and I headed back inside and tried to make someone understand my predicament. Eventually a customer who spoke Anglicky was found and she explained. Alas no water in Tesco, “coming tomorrow she said” She translated a refund for me and I headed back with the bad news to the team.
No problems we will just go back tomorrow and pick up heaps of water as with all the kayakers hitting town we will stock up. After training we drove to Tesco- had the team reinforcements to carry all the water, but alas the pallet was empty and the said water had not arrived. All bought a sticky cake and thought lets head to the other supermarket and bingo a huge stack of water. We loaded up 72 bottles plus some other goodies and queued to pay, feeling pretty smart that we had the lions share of the water in Roudnice.
The checkout operator rang it all up and I handed over the credit card to pay- ‘no credit cards she said ( in Czech )’ ( every other supermarket has taken credit cards)
As I didn’t have enough Czech korunas, and we couldn’t explain, putting the transaction on hold with arm waving and gesticulation, she sent for someone who had a vague knowledge of English.
To wind up this story, I left the team, headed to the money machine at the bank, returned with 2000 Koruna and we at last had our water.. ‘Great water’ was the team’s reaction and we are now tripping over bottles of water….. but at least we won’t be dehydrated.
Everyone could see the funny side and we did all crack up laughing as we returned to the hotel.
Think I’ll appreciate turning on the tap in NZ.

The boys decided to play a mean trick on Ella and hide all her Swiss Chocolate in our room which doubles as the team room for lunch, video etc

It was pretty funny watching her rip the place apart searching for her chocolate. It may have gone a tad too far when they boys ruled that she had 20 minutes to find all 6 bars or they would start eating it. They had the advantage of height ( mainly Erics) so she was unable to reach the top of the cupboard so lost the deal and some of her precious chocolate.

Once the chocolate was recovered and the boys forgiven we drove to Litomerice a small town north of Roudnice. Through small villages and lots of open country. Large plantings of wheat, redcurrants on wires, cabbages, caulis and corn filled every flat space. Litomerice is where some of the teams are staying and is 18km away from the course. It had a large cobbled square, with some amazing old buildings with a variety of gothic and baroque architecture. We went to the museum which was pretty cool for a small town, as it had a variety of things historic including scale models of the town, old maps of Ceske Slovenski, a book of hymns hand written from the 1500’s and human bones from 5000BC. The custodian was pretty excited to have some New Zealanders through- he said we were the first and he wanted NZ coins from us!!!.
After a huge icecream we explored the city and then headed back to Roudnice and the course. It is getting quite exciting as more nations arrive to train. We talked to the Swedish coach who had driven 27 hours to get there. The Italians arrived as we were watching also. There are more than 20 countries listed which is not as many as the Worlds, but as teams can bring six paddlers in each class there may be more people. The Germans and British are bringing their “B” teams and the French are not coming at all. This is all because the European U23 Champs are the following weekend in Kracow, Poland, so their top teams will be going to that instead. Others like the Swiss will leave after racing next Sunday and drive to Kracow for the racing. It is unfortunate that we can’t race in those races as well.
Just had dinner with the Swiss again at our hotel’s Pizzeria and heading to bed as a 6.30am start again tomorrow. Training early to beat the heat and the crowds on the river. The Aussie team arrives tommorrow night and will be in all our organised training slots from Monday with the Swedish team as well .

Great to read of the netball and rugby scores!

Take care

cheers

sue