From World Cup to Europeans! Sort, Lyon, Wildalpen, Prague, Cunovo!

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!

Judges team

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!

Dinner pan

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

Air Screw in Lyon feeling proper aerial!

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.

Maks at cartwheel

Michal Entry

Getting some air

Crowd cheering for us at Finals

Click here for my final run!

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.

Irish before Lassing taking FISHES as snack!?

Yum Yum Yum

KusKus vol 1. Just too much.

Night game, rainy but fun!

Alpakaaas!

#selfielongboardbmx

walk with a dog ha?

at top of the mountain!

Lassenberg, probably

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.

#Jaghutte hit of b-day!

b-day gift from Adam! Best Ever!

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.

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.

Michal entry

Space

catching some clean air

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!

Entry at first training

Jakob lookin for Mcnasty

Woo tricky in!

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!