Soooo... It was pretty long
while since i wrote anything so this one will be long. Also it will
contain alot of photos so i hope it will pay back for waiting so long
to see anything!
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| Judges team |
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| View over Sort |
The last World Cup had place
in Sort. Big demanding hole with wavy and trashy parts besides each
other. You could go super huge but you could flash away after making
just a single mistake.They werent too huge but were consistent and i
felt confident hitting them often which worked good enough to land
into K1M prelim in top 10 with two solid rides. In squirt i made it
to final round from 4th place. In quarterfinals water level was a
little bit different and my rides didnt work out as well as before, i
had failed the first one but still had 2 more, 2nd went quite good
and i had to repeat it to make it to semifinals. I already got some
solid points and had plenty of time and then went for mcnasty but
more in pistol flip style and pulled my spray deck off kicking me out
of my boat in 15 seconds from end of my ride.. unfortunetly by not
lending that mc nasty in the hole i didnt make the next round which
was really bad luck there. Finished at 13th place. But still had
squirt final to go which i was pretty excited to as i was preparing
my ride to contain of as much squirt moves as i could manage. Fight
was very tight for 3rd place between me and Tomasz, first i set high
score over 500, then he beat me just with few points holding it until
last run. Then i hit 600 points after getting my screwing around in
my floatboat! Was biggest score i ever get in squirt so i was very
happy for it and happily got bronze medal. After everything has
finished there were medal ceremonies followed by Spanish style
fireworks and closing party. That was great month – hanging out
with friends from all over world and pushing the skills to the next
level. But there was no time to chill and do as we planned – going
for rest for sightseeing to Barcelona as we were monitoring the water
levels in Lyon for few days already and it seemed that Hawaii Sur
Rhone might be working!
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| Dinner pan |
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| Bronze medal! |
So Just in morning next day
we hit the road with Marcel also and went straight to Lyon. We
arrived in late evening but we were so excited that we had to try it
out. The problem is none of us did paddle there before so we had no
idea where exactly should we go. River channels there are huge, but
we checked the place that it used to be before finding huge foam pile
and decided to give it a try, it turned out to be huge powerful wave
with so strong shoulder that neither me nor Marcel could get out of
it! The only way out was after failing the trick on shoulder which
was hard to even initiate or to ferry all the way through huge foam
pile into other side. After few runs we were so tired and scared that
we gave it up. But we though to take a look into other channel which
is just next to it as we thought we heard some noises there which was
pretty strange at it was after 21 already. Luckly we've found local
guys paddling on other channel and they said us that you normally
paddle left channel but right now the water level was too small for
left part where it's best but right part gave us some fun. We took
only few runs as we were so tired. We went sleep and in morning Stas
and Adam joined us with our car. Also Jordan and Dennis – C1ers
from USA arrived there but they had only one C1 and one OC1 so it was
pretty sick when they took both of them on the water. Was pretty fun
to paddle together! We spend very long time on right shoulder and
went for dinner. USA guys left as they had to chase their flight from
Munich and we were considering doing same as Marcel got sick but we
decided to hit it again as we were already there and it turned out
that water had rised in the meantime by ~200 qubics providing perfect
levels ~1100-1200! We met there great friend of mine Tim and few more
Frenchies that we paddled with before. Was great fun to paddle there
together. Surfing at this perfect wave felt so awesome that you could
fell in love with kayaking again. We spent 5 hours playing there
going huge and taking fun from carving but then it was time for us to
go to next place on our trip map – Wildalpen
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| Air Screw in Lyon feeling proper aerial! |
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| Air Screw or Pan Am? No difference , feels great! |
We arrived to Wildalpen at
tuesday afternoon, was big relief to us to get back to our favorite
place again. Wonderful weather greated us here at Naturefreunde
Camping in the middle of Alps. We happily found out that already some
of our friends are here. After warm greeting we started our trainings
next day, we found out the water level was very low and after first
session in my carbon boat i decided that i need to get another
solution to get proper training here. For next session i changed into
plastic rockstar and definetly felt more comfortable as i didnt have
to worry about boat anymore! On evening, two new members of our crew
arrived – two juniors from my club who im training – Maks "Drak"
& Michal "SJ" along with their dad who drove them here.
He stayed one more day , so we went for short run of Salza river and
then he took off back home, unfortunetly along with Stas as he had to
go back to Russia.
We were having wonderful
time here training and chillin with more and more friends coming to
have fun here. The event was happening at Saturday and was pretty
pumped with great paddlers from Austria, Slovakia, Czech, Germany,
not missing us from Poland of course! Becouse of it's location, great
atmosphere and great playspot i think that Wildalpen Freestyle is
slowly becoming one of the most favorite playspots and competition on
paddlers calendar. I was pretty busy as i was judging all categories,
helping to speak and also competing in K1M. On day of competition
despite earlier showers, the water got really low so it was pretty
hard to get good place for moves avoiding the stones so it was quite
demanding to go for big scores, already cut to semi was quite tight
as there were so many good paddlers – i was very happy to see Adam
making it for first time to semi and Ondra catching top 5 place. I
managed to get the lead after this round. Juniors performed also well
sitting at 2nd and 4th place while Honza Havelka was on the lead with
his sweet tricky woos. In Women Corina dominated the class throwing
regular big aerial loops with some solid spins and cartwheel
atttempts and as usual for C1 Lukas was on the lead. Semi in K1M went
smooth with big crowd cheering for us on the bank, into top 5 made it
Honza Spindler, Marcel Bloder, Stepan Vohradsky, Peter Csonka and me.
With Peter we got tie on our best run but my second best was better
so i was still sitting at leader place. Quite a suprise was for
Martin Koll to miss the finals here but he hadnt too much time to
practice this year.
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| Maks at cartwheel |
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| Michal Entry |
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| Getting some air |
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| Crowd cheering for us at Finals |
Finals were awesome
entertainment, in Women class Corina kept her leader place, in
Juniors Honza was out of reach for other juniors but Oliver Hepp
local Austrian kid managed to get 2nd place with huge aerial loop. In
C1 Lucas dominated his class but surprise was at 3rd place where
Andrea Kaspers trying C1 for the first time managed to take 3rd
place! Then in K1M there were big emotions, everybody were trying
hard, especially Marcel Bloder – only Austrian in Finals was trying
his best which put him on the end with high 3rd place. I had very
solid first run but for 3rd one i've got so much support from big
crowd that i went even bigger getting one of biggest runs of my life
and taking first place! 2 nd place went to Peter Csonka.
In the evening after closing
ceremony we had great party with everybody having big fun celebrating
awesome event!
It was great event, i've had
a blast being here and always love to be part of it. I'm already
looking forward for next events here which as i predict will be
bigger and bigger as everything around here is so wonderful!
After the event we stayed
there for full month hanging out with friends, training hard and
working. Every day i was getting up, starting to prepare breakfest
then mostly Maks was joining me then Adam and Michal was always late
so dishwashing was his punishment. Then i was leaving to work while
guys were training, going for mountains or just chilling at camping
also sometimes going to work with me to see how you teach kayaking.
Then afterwork we were having dinner, going for afternoon session,
eating supper watching a movie and then going to sleep. In between we
were having alot of fun but this was the order we had for most of the
time, still even tho it sounds busy we had great fun together.
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| Irish before Lassing taking FISHES as snack!? |
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| Yum Yum Yum |
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| KusKus vol 1. Just too much. |
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| Night game, rainy but fun! |
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| Alpakaaas! |
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| #selfielongboardbmx |
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| walk with a dog ha? |
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| at top of the mountain! |
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| Lassenberg, probably |
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Michal, Mike & Maks
M&M&M's? |
Also
it was very nice as alot of Polish people visit the camp this year so
we were hanging out with others aswell. I had again one of my best
b-days there.
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| #Jaghutte hit of b-day! |
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| b-day gift from Adam! Best Ever! |
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| Bday cake with friends! |
Also one day as we thought that we had enough water to
run nearby Lassing river – written for class IV-/III+ but for me it
was more like III~, long flat start with getting narrow later but we
had quite low water. Anyway if you get water at take out over wooden
construction on left river side then it should be good enough. It's
good for people with solid roll as it's quite rocky but was good to
check it out.
On last day before leaving
we went for kummerbricke where we had very high water – 55 on dam +
~10+ coming from power house and some extra from the side stream –
we went with few locals that knew it very well and we decided to skip
the top 600m part as you had to know the line there as it was huge
amount of water pushing you down all the time. So we started a little
bit lower but water was so big that we had really good fun at waves
there. I was paddling prijon Curve which turned out to be very good
boat – huge but very good, nice edge control, very fast easy to
buff an go straight and not hard to turn despite it's size. After
this there were Helli's b-day and then it was time for us to leave to
Freestyle Fest to Prague.
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| trip to Cunovo from Wildalpen for training session |
Prague was as always great
event. Was cool to catch up with alot of friends from Czech. Hole was
pretty nice this year, tho everyday littlebit different. For it i
picked jk rockstar as it was quite big and stip so it gave me more
control. I did quite well in prelims but then in semi i slipped into
finals from 5th place despite number of tricks i performed. Anyway i
didnt feel solid that day as we run kayak cross before and i had alot
of paddling before. Also i spent all day with Michal Wrzal – the A
team manager outfiting new boat for me. At Sundays morning i went out
to test it and it felt very nice, great easy big air and very solid
on stern with easy to initiate stern. Did few test runs and got out
from the boat with big smile on my face – this will be boats for
Europeans.
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| Michal entry |
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| Space |
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| catching some clean air |
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| New boat! |
Afterwards there were
finals, both juniors made it to this round, Michal did great entry
move and big loop finishing at 4th place, Maks did solid aerial loop
with cartwheels and spins taking 3rd place for him. Was very proud
for them but had to focus for my runs. Men finals were very tight.
From Czech there were Honza Spindler, Stepan Vohradsky and Ondrej
Krivanek then Peter Csonka from Slovakia and me. We had pretty equal
first runs but then Peter killed it with his 2nd run scoring 1100
poitns with 3 or more trophy moves, i did my best in 3rd run but
scored only 790 missing tricks from right side. Overall then came 2nd
after Peter but big surprise was 3rd place – where Ondra won Czech
champion title for the first time! Big gratz for my pirate-production
team member! Just after him was Honza Spindler which put as close
together again :) After this we were planning to have a rest day and
Maks had to go home so there were supposed to be only 3 of us but
then kayak hijacker Jakob Hannule from Belgium asked if it would be
possible to join us on way to cunovo. We didnt think that it will be
menagable for us but we packed our staff best we could and fit all
into the car with 4 boats and squirt FIN on the top! Then we went for
cinema in evening and left to Aquapark & wellness next day for
rest. Wellness was amazing and we all felt great after it, was
deserved rest but now it's time to get focused and get in best
condition possible for Europeans! Only 1 week for kick off!
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| Entry at first training |
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| Jakob lookin for Mcnasty |
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| Woo tricky in! |
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| Home for next 2 weeks |
So as i've mentioned before
– i got into A team now paddling Agillity boat spin for Europeans
and then switching into new boat we prepared together with Michal
Wrzal and Agility – Reaper – it's coming! But for now – getting
my routine into spin, working and looking good!
