Oceania Champs Finals- NZ Team Selection Fineto

It is always a pleasure to race on Mangahau. The river provides a range of great features and the flow is fast. By New Zealand standards it is ‘A class’ with electronic timing, permanent gates and a scenic backdrop of the Mangahau Valley. Sitting on the start you always get the best of convo’s with the infamous Carol and Ju Walkley and at the event on the weekend there were even live results! The Oceania Championships was an awesome event that ran very smoothly. With Athletes ranging from rugrats to World Champ medallists the competition was good and left little room for error. There were several World Champ Finalists, including the three Auzzy women- Kate Lawrence, Jess Fox and Sarah Grant, and in the men- Pierre Bouriland alongside World Champ silver medallist Vavra Hradliek.

Both Saturday and Sundays racing counted towards New Zealand Team selections as well as the Oceania competition. On the Saturday I was feeling a little nervous but put down some solid clean runs to see me through to the Semi-finals in a comfortable 6^th position and place me as 2^nd boat on the New Zealand team. On the Sunday I was very relaxed but went out of the start blocks hard. I put down a good first run that saw me through to the final in 5^th position, I then performed a similar run with good lines and finished in 3^rd after Kate Lawrence in 1^st and Sarah Grant in 2^nd. This also placed me as the Under 23 Oceania Champion! Stoked. The race had been a sucess, I had set some good plans and delivered. I was feeling a little disappointed that I could not put down a faster time, as I was hoping to go three seconds faster in my final run, but I was content with my performance. I have definitely improved a lot since this time last year, I feel a lot fitter and stronger and more reactive on the white water.

In the K1Men Switzerlands Mike Kurt dominated taking away gold, with Czech’s young Jiri in 2^nd and Sam Lyons in 3^rd. C1Men was taken out by the Frenchmen with Denis G in first followed by Martin Thomas and Pierre Antone Tillard. For all the results go to: SlalomNZ