Finals and Teams

A cooler day today and after breakfast everybody headed to the course to watch the first of the finals. Bigger crowds today with the parking in the paddock across from the course 3 or 4 rows deep - we try to move down one end of the grandstand to keep away from the very noisy Germans, Slovakians and Polish people who today introduced big drums to their noise makers of choice. The speakers for the commentator are right in front of the centre of the stands and when he is not talking above pre-recorded music, they have fiercely loud rock and rap music blarring which gets turned up even louder when a slovakian paddler is on the course - which happened heaps today during the finals. Headache material and not that pleasant - however it does mean that our end of the stands is not that crowded which is good. Sandwiched between the runs on a stage opposite the grandstand they had displays of dancing girls in mismatched costumes, mismatched footwork, and it was a bit like watching your kids dancing in their bedrooms when they think you aren't looking.

finals watching - quiet end of the stands!

Marcus in the middle

The mens K1 finals were magic to watch with the top 3 places on the score board changing after each new run. It was top class racing on a very challenging course dominated in the end mostly by the European paddlers. Our guys competed in the K1U23m teams, K1U18m  teams and the C2U18m teams events this afternoon. It was very obvious that the Slovakian, Slovenian, Polish and Czech teams had all spent time practising together for these events and the most important thing to do was to not 50 ..... we didn't manage that bit very well with all the teams incurring 50's to some degree or another. However our teams were certainly not the most chaotic and at times there was a bit of a muddle on the course when the teams weaving turned into knitting with knots - and the tangle of boats made for entertaining viewing. Judging must have been a nightmare and in fact all the European teams had inquiries lodged both for and against them and results changed even after results were finalised - go figure!! Our C2 boys of Luke and Dan had gotten a bit rusty having had a day off and managed to 50 the first gate in the teams run and another 50 and a roll for good measure further down the course. Marcus and Finn looked calm and confident but we know they were petrified and hanging onto their seat belts - however they managed the clean bit of the teams run and were followed down the course by the newbies to C2 Patrick and Tommy who coped very well with their
cameo appearance - ended up at the wrong end of the score board for medals.  Junior K1 run with Callum, Matthew and Finn was marred by a 50 early on - Callum was leading by a large margin in this race run but that's not the point in teams racing and Matthew and Finn brought up the rear today - cute but ineffective for medalling - entertaining. The K1U23 men managed to clock up a few 50's and a number of touches but never got into a tangle so that was good. Our girls and C1M don't really have a hard act to follow tomorrow, but the number of clean runs over the entire competition has been incredibly low so they will have their work cut out managing some low scoring runs.

u23k1 Matthew and Shaun doing the upstream gate dance

Matthew, Shaun and Malcolm negotiating the treacherous last two gates 

team run planning with Martin and Pavel ......

Martin working on the teams strategy with boys ..... don't think they were listening as well as they should have

This evening we went out for dinner and were joined by Maureen and Kensa, Agnieszka, Mr Polaczyk and Lukasz, his brother Gregor and his partner and baby and also Claire and Roger Gilbert who managed to find the restaurant unaided.

The old town centre of Liptovksy ,at night, is quite attractive compared to the rest of the town and the kids all found an icecream shop for dessert and then we headed home - more racing tomorrow and then we need to start on the packing up of boats and gear in readiness for an early start to Munich on Monday morning.