SUMMER 2017
4 weeks, 6 races, 6 finals and 3 podiums. Over the last 4 weeks I have travelled across Europe with 3 friends training and competing in various locations. After a day of travelling we arrived in Prague to get a few days paddling before moving onto the first main location Krakow, Poland. Two separate races on the Saturday and Sunday with both days being semi-final into final format with 2/3rds going through from the semis into the final. Saturday wasn’t my best day of racing just about scrapping through into the final and then 3 touches in my finals run left me down in 7th place. The Sunday was a lot more successful, a solid first run put me through to the final in 6th place. I knew for my final run I would need to attack hard with a few of the local polish boys putting down fast runs, thankfully I held together a quick and clean run holding onto first place until the last paddler went down knocking me down to finish 2nd.
After Krakow, we headed back to Prague for a few more days training before we headed further south to Ceske Budejovice on the Friday for 1 session before the race as we felt we didn’t need that much time on the course. Again, there were separate races on the Saturday and Sunday with the same format, both days went very similar for me, solid semi-final runs put me through to the final comfortably and learning from Krakow I knew I needed to go all out in the finals to get on the podium and that’s what I did. A fast-clean run on the Saturday got me a 2nd and another fast but slightly messy run with 2 touches on the Sunday got me a 3rd. Each weekend would have an overall scoring system and with my 2nd and 3rd place this put me overall in 1st.
After a successful Ceske, we moved onto the final location Bratislava. The course here is a lot more physical and technical and after all the other training and racing was feeling tired on the water so lightened training to be as fresh as possible for racing. I knew this race was going to be a tough one with many top French paddlers showing up to race. The times were tight and racing quick over the weekend, both days I put down solid semi-final runs to put me through to the final. Both days in the final I put down solid fast clean runs, with such tight racing I finished 7th on the Saturday only 1 second behind making the podium. The Sunday I finished 4th with small errors in run costing me the podium with less than 2 seconds between me and 1st.
