News & Results

Hi Jim,
The event was really good fun. And Ade’s coaching was brilliant so thank you very much.

awesome event at the tryweryn, thanks Jim & co.!

hey jim it was a really good weekend and i really enjoyed and so did the kids.so thanks for all your hard work.
now that the results are up i want to know why i have only one of my runs marked. i did two runs like the guys, one on the wave and then one in the allacross weir but theres only results for one, so i dont follow it -please can you explain.
cheers
mags

Jim you did an awsome job and yes i enjoyed coaching all those Incubators (i just hope they got something out of it). I do think that for people that do not have a creek boat and a play boat that the boto x is a tad one sided. Would it be possible to bring the old Peak UK rule of one boat for all. from experiance it is a lot fairer. a couple of things were suggested to me to encourage people to come along and now i shall voice them (god im going to be mr popular).
1. more speeder challenges (pehaps not on nene)
2. More venues (if possible e.g. llangollen, tees barrage etc)
3. OC1 boto x ??
4. 1 off knockout freesyle challenges (anyone can enter)
i will be at all next years events so feel free to get me helping you out and i am happy to coach the incubators. Thank you to those people who helped me out, Chris Chapman and others (not very good with names sorry). See you all next year.

Heya Jim,
It was a wicked weekend really enjoyed it. the comps were well organised and the carange at the end of the day was really good fun. My dad and all the other old gits really had a great time with there own little comp. they would love to see it at all the other events (if possible). Just a big thanks to say well done for organising such a good event and looking forward for it coming round next year.

many thanks
pops, gav, and the little one (arron)

if you need any dogs body or hustlers next year just let us know.

Hi Jim,

Hope you have recovered from the weekend. Thanks for putting on such a great event, and in fact series. The whole thing has been really well organised and has had a much more relaxed atmosphere than the events over the last few years

Excellent series, excellent finale.
Keep up the good work.

Hi, I just wanted to drop you a line following the event yesterday at HPP, first off I’d like to thank you all for all the work you put in - My daughter & I have been at the Nene and HPP, we’re new to the sport this year, and absolutely loved both events. The good humour you all kept up while dealing with us all is amazing, thanks for giving up your time to put this on.

Yesterday you asked for comments for next year, so I thought I’d strike while I remember!

1) Incubator Class, I know this must be really hard to ‘police’ (wrong word but you get the idea), but I do think there needs to be maybe an interim step between incubator and sport. On the boys side there were some really good paddlers in this class, who didn’t really belong there. I can see from a point of experience (in competition) or feature size they should be - but when you have people cartwheeling and rolling without a paddle, on occasion looping etc. there’s clearly something going wrong. On the girls side it seemed better matched, but certainly some of the boys seemed to have entered this class so they could win, rather than push themselves in the sport category. If there was an interim class, on the incubator feature maybe, but scored differently I think that would make a lot of difference and would be an appropriate progression for both sides.

2) On a similar front, yesterday/Saturday there were two people who competed in sport then didn’t do well so came to do incubator - that doesn’t seem right to me, I know it’s meant to be encouraging to people rather than rules based, but again it seemed to devalue the people who were really trying in incubator - maybe if you want to let people do that (drop down a level), then they can paddle - but they don’t count in the prizes etc?

3) Coaching - both at the Nene and HPP, I got some really good tips - so thanks to Chris Chapman and Aide. What I think would work slightly better is trying to impose a little more structure on it - the classes were disrupted quite a bit on both occasions by people coming into the feature and playing on it in the middle of the class. Simple bad manners really, sometimes they took some getting rid of - again mainly seemed to be teenage boys showing off! Maybe if some ground rules were at the briefing that’d help?

4) Old Gits - I was down to do this yesterday, unfortunately couldn’t because of a clash of events but I think it’s a great idea. Certainly if there was this class, scored to the incubator rules but on a slightly bigger feature (maybe), that’d be a winner. Getting us over 35s doing the old school stuff on a nice wave is a great laugh and we can just take the mickey out of each other. That would also free up the incubator class a little too - I know logistically it would also make it harder, for coaching we could be combined maybe?

5) BoaterX - Something I consistently felt, and I know a few others said this too, was that something more needs to be done about boat choices - it’s pretty clear you have a huge advantage in a river runner, I know the gates try and address that, but on any course length I don’t think they do. One solution would be to say you have to use one boat for freestyle/boater x, but that probably won’t work - I just feel at the minute you’re pushed into having two boats if you want to compete - which is a bit of an ask for some parents, and a bit discouraging for some of the kids. As an adult in a Star I can take I’m knackered by halfway down (the boat probably won’t change that!), not sure the kids.

6) Event Info - really thought long and hard about this, I don’t want to upset anyone and I know it’s all voluntary - but I think it would have helped to firstly have got the information on timings earlier, and also to have made more use of online registration. We put the details in online (didn’t pay though), but still had to fill in the forms both times (was told at the Nene that I couldn’t do one form for both events), that makes it a real log jam. Maybe you could say - you have to pre-register by date x. And pay on line, then on the day it’s just a bib handing out exercise. People who haven’t pre-registered would then have to queue somewhere else, and maybe pay slightly more - but I’m sure most would pre-register, which would surely make your admin easier on the day? (i.e. you can have heats mapped out with a couple of empty ones for on the day registrations etc.) And would also mean that briefings etc. could be started more on time.

That’s all for now, I hope these points are useful - as I said, I have nothing but respect and grattitude for the efforts you all put into the weekends I have had - if you could have spent time in my car on the journey home listening to my daughter talking about it - it was an amazing feeling. Thanks again for making this happen.

I think you’re doing a really good job with it. Not sure if its possible but would be good to see 1 or 2 more events next year.

We were only spectators at Nottingham, but we have watched a lot of the Peak competitions and were very impressed how Alpkit have picked up the batton from Peak UK. This weekends competition seemed very well run, it was good that most events started on time and the prize giving took place as soon as the last event finished. I might even enter the old gits event myself last year !

Well done