Wow, what an epic weekend!
After some hard weeks training for the World Champs here in Bratislava it was time for a break from Slovakia and time to hit up the Czech Republic for some white water kayaking and racing!
Lipno is a beautiful scenic village that is just over the Austrian border and lies in some small mountains in the Czech Republic. It has beautiful pristine lakes and an awesome river that is sadly dammed and only flows one weekend per year!
Mike, Luuka, Ciaran, Katrina (Canada), Phill G and myself rocked up and stayed along side all of the Czech paddlers in a nice restaurant/hotel that overlooked the countryside. The first day we relaxed under the sun and enjoyed some nice swimming in the lake.
Friday the river came up and it was game time! After a few runs down the awesome slalom course I jumped into a creek boat and followed Mike, Phill and Vavra down the whole river. An awesome run and it felt soooo good to be back in a plastic boat! The river hosts continuous waves and some really fun weirs and rapids. It really got my adrenalin pumping and I was stoked!
Saturday was race day! I put down a solid run in the slalom to safely qualify through to the finals in 6th. I then boosted to the extreme race to qualify 1st spot in the final of the womans individual. Unfortunately I didn't pull through in the final and placed 2nd to Anne Hubner of Germany. I was very happy with 2nd prize however, big thanks to Teva, Hiko sport and the other sponsors of the event!
I then raced back up for my final run in the slalom which placed me in 7th, I carried a lot of adrenalin from the extreme race into the first half of my run which was primo, but blew out halfway down in one of the upstreams!
Sunday I raced again in the Slalom but didn't quite fire. I just scraped into the finals with a clean run and then when trying to cut the lines I incurred a 50second penalty and it was game over!
I am super happy with the weekend of racing and enjoyed my time in Lipno a lot. It was great to get back in the plastic boat and I feel a lot more confident about my paddling at the moment. Big thanks to all the Czechs for hosting us, especially Vavra! Also to the organisers of the extreme race, you guys made it an awesome event! Check it out: Devils Extreme Race!
Big ups to Mike Dawson who took out the mens individual, Jamie Sutton for winning the head to head and Sam Sutton, Jamie Sutton and Brendan Bayly for placing 3rd in the Teams! Yeah Kiwi domination! It was really awesome to catchup with the Kiwi's too!
In the Slalom Mike made finals both days also and Luuka also made finals on the Sunday!
Photo credit: Ciaran McArdle Heartau and www.devilsextremerace.com, Arnd Schaeftlein and Ladislav Vlcek
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