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Jnr and U23 European Slalom Champs 
Liptovsky Mikulas is not only the home to a canoe slalom God in the form of Michal Martikan, but also to a fantastic white water course, which last weekend played host to the Junior and U23 European Canoe Slalom Championships. With temperatures reaching the high 30 degrees, athletes were firstly challenged to stay cool before taking on the tricky slalom course.
The course at Liptovsky is shallow and extremely quick, mixed with a technically challenging section of water at the bottom makes a very exciting slalom course to both paddle and watch. With fantastic support for Team GB in the shape of paddlers, friends, relatives and partners there was a fantastic atmosphere perfect for racing.
Friday brought the qualification event for Gaz and I in the C2 U23 category, by the end of the morning some harsh and quick lessons were unfortunately learnt. Racing for us lasted only an hour, even though our pace was good enough to make the semi final, quite easily, in the sport of canoe slalom, points (penalty points) don’t make prizes!! Just disappointment. Although we were very disheartened not to make the semi final, we were proud of how we paddled, all the hard work we’d put in and the final preparations made in the run up to our first major international competition. Over a beer that night we drew on more positives things like, visiting a beautiful part of Europe, making new international alliances from the German team, seeing a real life wild bear (!) and competing within and supporting a successful GB Team.
We’d like to thank PeakUK for their continued support, the short sleeved racer topdecks we received just before departing for the race looked the business!
Words Paul Ramsdale. Picture Steve Evans
Race Website: http://www.euro2009.ktklm.sk/
(Posted on the 2nd Aug 2009 by timb) |
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