Jims post Washburn post
Well that’s the first Washburn Plastic Fantastic under the belt and I am pleased to report everything went well and even the sun came out to play.
With a few extra paddlers on the Saturday, on their way up to the Youth Freestyle, we started the Boater X competition. The start was a paddle bashing affair as the paddlers jostled for position for the first 100 meters before settling into a kayak peleton. Our narrow rivers allow as much overtaking as Formula 1 so to spice things up we added a different slalom gate for each paddler to complete a 360ยบ turn around. The kayak peleton came speeding into the arena beneath the second bridge, each paddler looking for their coloured pole. With the poles set closely together the paddlers peeled off to complete their ‘pit stop’, hoping to emerge ahead of the field. The final stretch of the river before the “broken weir” allowed those with more stamina to gain places in the final meters of the race. The gate system worked extremely well allowing overtaking to happen and no-one could make their mind up as to which was the fastest gate. Everyone ran the course in the morning and we split the top two paddlers, and the bottom 2 paddlers into a Plate and a Cup competition. Coming out top in the cup competitions was Richard Davison for the men and Molly Crisp in the ladies. In the plate James Reeves came in top in the mens and Nicola Bebbie came top for the ladies.
Between the Boater-X heats and finals we ran a hectic ALPJAM, whilst Nick and Claudia cooked us up some delicious farmhouse burgers for lunch. The scoring on the Alpjam needs some tweaking, well a lot actually, (I will have a chat with some paddling folk about how we can make this better and maybe run a few through the summer at HPP) but it gave everyone a chance to have a practice in the hole before the Freestyle on Sunday.
Saturday night we drank till the early hours an the Hooper Lane Hotel, the highlights included the funniest game of musical chairs I have ever seen and some of the brightest trousers since the 90’s!
Freestyle Sunday started bright and the sun just got brighter and hotter through the day. In the mens competition Sport and Expert paddlers competed separately, unfortunately there just wasn’t enough ladies to run separate Sport / Expert heats and finals but hopefully numbers will increase as the events become more popular and this will happen. The sport and expert categories worked brilliantly for the men. The sport men laid down mostly old skool cartwheels, racking end after end and some trying the odd loop or McNasty, whilst the Expert guys went all out for the bigger moves. This gave opportunity for the sport guys to gain knowledge of how a knock-out final runs and how to compete in one. All in all the Freestyle ran very smoothly, once we’d mastered the computer. James Bebbington put in a storming last ride of big moves to rack up the biggest score of the day, 452 points. James Reeves tried his hardest with end after, end, clean after clean to match James’ score but his 393 points just wasn’t good enough for 1st spot. In the sport category Mark Raeburn and Tom Petit shared the lead running up to the finals and looked the men to beat. Tom fell in the first round, but Mark with slightly more competition experience held his nerve and produced just enough to progress to the final pairing. Showing everyone he knew the sweet spot to the hole with a considered final ride notched his first place of the series. The ladies finals swung from paddler to paddler but Emily held her nerve making sure she had enough left in the tank to make her final run count and bagging top spot at the Washburn.
I would like to thank everyone who took part in this first event. I thought it was extremely successful and I cannot wait to see you all at the next Plastic Fantastic at the Tryweryn in September.
Full results and pictures of the Washburn event can be found at:
Washburn Results
Washburn Photos
