Sunday, June 28, 2009

Racing over in Pau for all except Luuka

Tauranga's Canoe Slalom Olympian Luuka Jones has produced a stunning performance at the brand new Stade D'Eaux Vives Pau, white water centre in Pau, Southern France.
Posting a flat time of 109.25 with a 2 second penalty to finish in 10th place on 111.25.
With only 20 boats making it through to semis Jones was in a comfortable position of 6th after first runs. With a place in semis virtually guaranteed the pressure was off for the second run.
Her career best performance has been a 28th place at one of last years world cups.
After first runs Jones said ' I can't believe it, this has never happened to me'
Jones who is in the kayak squad at Waiariki Institute of Technology has been training hard over the NZ summer and is thrilled that the hard yards are paying off.
Mike Dawson, was fast enough in first runs, in fact would have been 7th, but a 50 second penalty dashed his semis chances, Aaron Osborne also had a 50, while Louise Jull was outside the pace, however had a better second run.
The NZ junior team who were also competing at this World Cup,finished near the end of their respective classes.They all did parts of this big pushy course well, but it is a huge step up.They represented themselves well and benefitted hugely from the experience. It is tough to race in your first World Cup as a junior with all the hype of TV cameras and lining up by Olympic stars. It was all about experience for the juniors and will be a long term benefit for them.
Janer had an unfortunate lesson to learn as was pulled over for random boat control. She failed as was disqualified even though she had done all the right things and had the paperwork signed off. They said her boat weighed 8.98kg at the end of her run, and it weighed 9.03kg when scrutineered. the moral of the story- 'add a bit extra to make sure'
It didnt change any results as she had a roll and got a 50. Lot's of 50's given to even the best paddlers.

After semis and finals ( cut down to 10 boats) tommorrow the NZ seniors face a gruelling 24 hour drive to be ready to race World Cup 2 at Bratislava next weekend, while the junior team has a training camp with a French coach before meeting up with their fellow compatriots in Augsberg, Germany for WC 3 on 10th July.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Congratulations Luka absolutely awesome. Great experience for everyone. Ella looking so well called in yesterday and Monty nearly ate her, you know how keen she is on dogs!
Take Care
Love Ma & Pa

Anonymous said...

Congratulations Luka absolutely awesome. Great experience for everyone. Ella looking so well called in yesterday and Monty nearly ate her, you know how keen she is on dogs!
Take Care
Love Ma & Pa

Anonymous said...

Kind of hard to follow on live results, but did get quite excited.. specially when Luuka posted her results. Bloody good job. Cool to see the different nationalities taking part too. C2 boys did well to improve second run; had me confused that they get 21st, then 16th best runs and end up 25... but I'll get it eventually.
Enjoy the rest of your French excursions.. it looks gorgeous, particularly when the Bay is trying to live up to weekend heavy rain warnings
Cheers, Phil.

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