Worlds.

20-26 of june World Championships in Freestyle Kayaking had place. Monday was day of opening ceremony with athletes parade. Next day me and my teammates - Tomasz Czaplicki and Michal Wrzal had start at Squirt category. It was first time that you could start at surface boats becouse the rules had been changed so there were no boat specifications except safety requirements. It was pretty big chalenge for us becouse most of moves were different and we couldn't do mystery moves, thought we were able to bring some trophy. So we came up with idea of making flatwater Phoenix Monkey and McNasty. Thanks to this and some other flatwater moves Tomasz and me got into semi and Michal came 12th.
Wednesday was day of K1M prelims. I was so angry when i figured out that I'm at first heat at 9am! I'm really sleepyhead and it's hard to get up earlier for me so you can imagine my frustration when becouse of water alarm - hard rains forecast - whole schedule got moved and they put as much categories at one day as they could which has result at moving whole category 2 hours earlier which meant for me starting at 7am! That was nightmare. Anyway, somehow I managed to do that after going sleep really early and setting my alarms from 5am. The only thing that was cheering me up was that I was in one heat with one of my best friends - Thomas Dunphy from Ireland. I was even more relaxed thanks to really big crowd which gathered at 7am just for cheering! Thanks guys for making it that early! So after being given nice motivation and taking focus it came to my ride, which was almost perfect! However judges didn't think that. I made McNasty, 2 Phoenix Monkeys loop and 2 helixes and got scored only 450! which means they didn't count any of my phoenix thought they said at captains meeting that it'll be enough to pull it at 45 degrees at half only that's why i didn't look for vertical ones that much.. anyway, here is my ride, you can judge yourself.


gotta find my ride.


http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/15539311



At second ride i got flushed unfortunatly, and did only 2 phoenix, loop and mc nasty and that was a nail to my coffin becouse this ride got scored only 250.. still i was pretty sure it will be much more.


gotta find my ride.

http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/15539398


The thing is i wasn't the only one thinking that my rides were really good, my teammates and alot of other kayakers said it was blast which would surely shoot me at top 10. But the judges had different opinion about it. Getting 706,667 on the end made me 29th, just 4 places and JUST 40 points behind quarters.



I kept complaining about judges quite badly until i was timer at man quarters, which let me sit just beside Joey - one of the judges. At begining i thought he was really cruel at judging - and that's what i've told to him but he gave me quite satisfacting and good answer - I'm not cruel, I'm good. If we would count this moves which weren't made perfectly there would be no difference at scores. Which was actually shoot to ten. After getting their point of view i started to look at all the moves really strict - the way i was doing before "the english way". It was funny to discover that in over 95% of scoreing i would do same as him.

But still i think my rides got maybe a bit underjudged. Moves weren't perfect, but were followed by rules and i think it might be becouse of first heat - super high shaft which with time went a bit down which i could notice in later rides of some people.

So after getting knocked out I was pretty dissapointed but only for a while. Got focused really fast on next day start and after this on next competition, thought sense of sad still left somewhere deep.


At thursday we had Squirt Semifinals and unfortunatly both Tomasz and me got knocked out.. He came 7th and I came 9th. Seems that beating mystery move is not possible with normal boat but it was alot of fun anyway and well, quite big achievement getting that far in different boat.

Except competitor view i spent awesome time, meeting even more new people, partying with everybody and having fun together. It was so nice feeling that getting from our tent to playspot was taking me so long becouse there was always somebody to have some words with! Got even called few times as 'walking entertainment' ;).


I will be missing all of this staff so badly.. Living in plattling for so long time with so many great people from different places with their own stories and always something to do together. Thank you everybody for this awesome time i could spend with you!




Now I'm in Tacen at awesome kayak course. It's said to be class of WW III/IV and some places are really nice. I had even my first creeker ride ever! But i will stay with playboating - alot more fun ; ). Unfortunatly holes here are pretty shallow, on first day i made phoenix monkey with triple rock bonus ;) one hit at initiation then second with jump to loop and third when i was landing. My cowwy got few more scratches so it got duck tape protection now. Today morning they were adjusting water level from maximum - which was pretty nice wave but without almost eddy to medium - which is the best i think and will stay for competition which are tomorrow.

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Bartosz