Finals - Thun World Cup

The Thun finals all kicked off on Sunday (in more ways than one). It was all very exciting to watch and I was more than glad I wasn't judging. First up were the OC1s and this time James Weir hadn't quite got used to the wave so didn't throw down like he usually does - he came 3rd. Jez from Oz won. 

In the junior ladies Nouria from France was quite a way ahead of her competitors and took the win. There were 2 Brits in the final of the C1 and we were all in the stands supporting en masse, although being completely drowned out by the Frenchies' drum. Lee Pyke had several solid rides with big blunts and back blunts and held 3rd place until the last rides when Dane Jackson convincingly sneaked into 2nd, with some aerial things, ahead of Alexandre from France who must have done slightly fewer aerial things. 

Air France

Dave Bainbridge had held the lead since prelims but with such an unpredictable wave the win could have gone to anyone and certainly after his first ride where he flushed early it was all open. In his 2nd ride though he was back to throwing his trademark big back pan ams along with several other back and clean blunty pan-am things and although he didn't get quite the high score he took in semis this was more than enough to allow him to take the win. 

The top 3 junior men: Jason Craig 1st, Sebastien Devred 2nd, Dane Jackson 3rd, 

all threw down big rides with air blunts, pan ams and donkey flips. The scores were really close with just 30 points between 1st and 3rd. 

In the ladies event there were some fine lines between the angles of blunts and roundhouses - a lot of the moves being only just above, or just below 45 degrees which, especially given the height the judges were sitting at, must have been hard to call (particularly given the lack of protractors in the judges stand).  In those situations, you really have to sell the verticality to the judges to get it scored - Ruth did well with that and both her front and back blunts were spot on, although she didn't get quite as much variety (with right hand moves) as she had done in prelims. She took 3rd place. 

Jutta Kaiser

Marianne had a fairly solid first ride with a left blunt and right and back roundhouses as well as some spins, she also made a really good effort at a flip turn/felix just after the 10 second buzzer but didn't quite get the rotation for a felix or the air for a flip turn. When her score was read out though it obviously wasn't what she was hoping for and, what can only be described as 'a bit of a strop' ensued. I can understand high emotions over scores, particularly if it felt like you should have scored a move, though I don't think it is really fair to publicly criticise the judges for what they have seen you do (or not do, as the case may be). As a paddler you are performing to the judges and you need to make sure that performance is accurate and obvious enough for the judges to see and to be able to give points for, if not- well, it's not primary school, there are no points for trying.

I would always want to critically view a video of my ride if I thought the judges had scored me incorrectly - just to see it from their viewpoint because, as previously said, they are so much higher and everything looks to be at different angles to that at the waters edge/on the wave. After all it could be quite embarrassing to be ranting and raving because you think you have, for example, scored a donkey flip when in fact, following careful video feedback, you realise you merely performed a slight 'cow tipper'* 

*'cow tipper' = phrase coined by Louise 'Wiggy' Wigmore used to describe a falling on the head and rolling up again in the style of a donkey flip (but without the 'donkey'... or much of a 'flip')

Emily Jackson got some nice back blunts. 

Anyway, back to the finals, Lenka and Jutta came 5th and 4th respectively. Marianne's final ride contained some nice blunts and she went for a donkey flip at the end - she was a lot happier with the resulting score of 223 points which put her into the lead with just 2 paddlers to go. Although Ruth maintained her 3rd place position, Emily put in a higher scoring ride of 276 points, which included blunts, a big back blunt and a clean spin - giving her a second win of the World Cup series. 

The men were up next and their fast, powerful blunts and aerial moves made the wave look easy - though there were still a few unwanted flushes. Stephen Wright put in a massive score, particularly for this relatively low-scoring feature, of 906 points on his first ride, from several air McNasties and combo moves (air blunt into air mcnasty). Although the crowd thought this was probably unbeatable Nick Troutman had other ideas and immediately responded by throwing down even more variety than Stephen had just performed - with clean pan ams, back pan ams, air blunts front and back and a McNasty he earned 930 points and took 1st place with this ride.

Nick Troutman won the Thun event. 

 

The other paddlers couldn't get close to their scores, though Peter Csonka still had a solid ride with some nice clean pan ams and came 3rd. Mathieu Dumoulin was 4th and Dustin Urban, who suffered from some early flushes came 5th.

Peter Csonka took the overall World Cup title. 

The overall World Cup rankings were announced during prize-giving, although there wasn't much made of it and it was only those who took the first place position that got to go onto the podium (or, rather - upended log). Even if they didn't have a trophy for the 2nd and 3rd places, it would have been nice to at least have got a few seconds on the podium in recognition for getting in the top 3 after 3 weeks of hard competition and 130Euros in competition fees (maybe a small medal would have been nice too!). 

Anyway, I came 3rd overall, Ruth Gordon 2nd and Emily Jackson 1st. Emily verbalised how retarded it was to not have the 2nd and 3rd places up at the front, so she let us muscle in on her 1st place glory and took both of us up to the podium (upended log) with her. She collected a bizarre looking cup as did Peter Csonka and the other winners - whose names are posted in various places on the internet. 

I feel a bit 'competitioned out' now  and there are still two more left to go in this season - this weekend is the 'festival of freestyle' in Nottingham with cash prizes up for grabs (nice) and at the beginning of October its the British Champs (again in Nottingham). 

In the meantime it's back down to earth with a hefty bump as today I started with my new class of 30 5-yr olds. Lovely.