demos, parades and dancing girls

This mornings session saw us sharing the water with 72 boats with only three quarters of an hour allowed - the ICF had decided that to make it work everyone would have just two runs, leaving at 20 second intervals and doing a full run down the course with no stopping ..... yeah right. You do the maths - they didn't allow enough time for everyone to get two runs for a starter and you know paddlers - they don't take any notice of  "don't stop in the eddies, keep going, don't practice your crosses ....." add in the odd roll, swim and dawdle and you have a recipe for disaster.  The session before us was very entertaining with only 65 boats on the water but heaps of crashes and stressed paddlers cursing each other .... some pretty aggressive paddling was observed. The course is very busy with boat scrutineering, bib collection, start lists, accreditation, parking, bad parking, blocking the way parking, boats everywhere and hundreds of people. Today the weather has improved with a little bit of a cool breeze this morning but the afternoon was hot and sunny for the demonstration runs at 4pm. The course is not that hard (according to Pavel and Martin) but has long stretches of sprinting at the top end followed by more technical gates from half way down. You can catch the live streaming on the link on the ICF page. Tomorrow we have U23 k1 men Shaun at 8.43 and 11.09 and Malcolm at 9.10 and 1.36. Followed in the afternoon by the U18 K1 men Matthew at 14.50 and 17.51, Callum 15.21 and 18.12 and Finn at 15.35 and 18.26. The U18 C2 Finn and Marcus 16.34 and 19.25 and Dan and Luke at 16.43 and 19.34. and that's it for tomorrow.

just one of the many aisles of hundreds of boats in storage

watching demos

the humped back bridge with our lot watching demos on a very overloaded bridge

Tonight was the opening ceremony and we all assembled in the centre of the old town to get into line for the parade. There were young people dressed in national costume holding each countries name and we lined up alongside. Ella, representing the Cook Islands, had almost the youngest name bearer of the lot.

Ella and her Slovakian girl

Ella in the parade

New Zealand team with Patrick as the flag bearer

entering the square

turning into the square to form up alongside the 44 other countries

listening to the speeches, spoken in both Slovakian and English

the dancing girls entertainment after the speeches

Martin loving the dancing girls

It was pretty cool watching the parade of all the athletes and their support crews - there were lots of people watching and clapping and once everyone was assembled in the square there was a welcome song played by two guitarists followed by a few speeches, none of which were too long and all of which were translated in to English. You got the feeling that the people associated with the event, which by the way is the biggest canoe slalom event yet, were all very proud to be hosting so many countries here in Liptovsky Mikulas. After the speeches the guy in charge announced that we would now be entertained by the cultural part of the festivities and on came some dancing girls - doing a kind of cheerleading, areobics, hip hop, 'dancing with the stars' interpretation of a Slovakian pop song. Everyone loved it, Martin swayed in time to the music, and after one item that was it, all over. Home we came. Dale and Aaron away to a 'Banquet' for team leaders etc - and the kids all had a second tea since the first one was eaten at 5.15 before we left and of course they were all hungry again by 7.30 when we arrived home. Early start tomorrow for some and then staggered arrival to the course for the others - these next few days will be very long and the kids will have to pace themselves.