GB Team Selections

This year was really hard to make the team, I think I said that last year, but this year I really felt under pressure as the selection event was being held on my local playspot: Hurley weir. The level was what is usually termed a 'perfect 3-gater'. However, whilst 'perfect' for an afternoon paddle in the sunshine with a couple of people in the eddy it was, unfortunately, not quite so 'perfect' for a competition as the 'perfect 3-gater' is actually fairly flushy - the green shoulders allow for huge moves (which makes for the 'perfect' bit of the name), but the shoulders were maybe just a bit too green for a competition - in fact both shoulders ran into each other, the wave was ALL shoulders and really lacked the usual retentive pile on the top. 

My worries at the beginning of the week about the weir going up to 4 gates were quickly replaced with worries about it dropping down to 2 gates: the joys of British boating! Thankfully it stayed on 3 though as a 2-gate level would have meant left-hand moves only.  

For most competitors the plan seemed to be to stay relatively safe and tick off some of the 'lower scoring' moves before finishing with some big moves - if you were still on by that stage. A few brave paddlers had the 'go big or go home' attitude. The former paid off more frequently than the latter, though throughout the day I heard several people saying 'did you see that huge airscrew/pan am/helix etc that I got after my competition rides!' - so, the big moves were possible, but not many people wanted/could land them in their rides because of the big green-ness mixed with the 'fear of flush' factor. 

The 3 places on the ladies team were all up for grabs and it really was an 'open' event, I had been watching Emily Wall and Lowri Davies perform consistently all week. I knew Claire O had only just learnt blunting at Hurley but she seemed to have mastered it and had been throwing some big air blunts and although Jen Chrimes had not had any practice on the wave she adapts to new features very quickly and I was expecting her to go big as well. And me? I was confident with the moves that I'd been doing throughout the week, but didn't think I would be able to land anything big on the level it was at, so it was going to be a case of staying consistent with relatively small blunts and back blunts on both sides and taking time to set up for them in the hope that I wouldn't flush early. 

The levels proved difficult for most of the ladies (and all of the other categories!) and just about everybody flushed early at some point - some earlier than others. I got a couple of blunts (maybe some air that scored) and back blunts/roundhouses on most of my rides

but I flushed early a couple of times off the left radial. I couldn't tell whether my blunts would have scored as such as the judges were above the wave and it was hard for them to see both the angle and the air though in the end I had scored enough for 1st place! Emily was really pleased with her rides and her 4th run had just about everything in it that she wanted to be there and she took a deserved 2nd place. Lowri proved to the rest of the field that not everyone flushed off the wave as she stayed on for the full 45 seconds on at least 2 of her rides racking up points and giving her the 3rd spot on the team. 

I didn't watch many of the other categories as I was adding up scores (not my own!!) though I heard that local boy Doug Cooper's training had paid off as he got some huge clean air blunts/pan ams and huge clean back blunts to give him 1st place. A few of the men's team regulars made it again: Jon Best, Alan Ward and Dicky Chrimes who are joined by relative newcomer Sam Anderson who put in some really consistent clean blunts to give him 5th place just 3.33 points ahead of local traveller Chris (Pikey) Bucksey. Notable absences from selection this year - Pringle who is still partying...ooops, I mean paddling, hard and video boating in Uganda and Ed Smith who has various University projects happening at the same time as the Worlds. 

The Junior men had a tie for 3rd place between Stu Parry (who had just made it onto the C1 team after only being in a C1 boat for a few weeks) and Joe Bradley. Their rides were totally different - Stu played it relatively safe and Joe was going for the bigger moves, though they ended up with equal scores so it was the highest scoring dropped ride that counted meaning Stu Parry took the team place with Joe Bradley in 3rd. Hurley regular Ben West put in several high scoring rides so he took 1st place with Arron Layton in 2nd. Its great to see some new faces on the junior team, but its also a shame that Joe didn't make it as I know he is usually a fantastic wave boater.

We were using some provisional new ICF freestyle rules for this event (which have since changed slightly) - the main difference between these and the rules used at the World Cup last year was the scoring of bonuses. The bonuses available were: air, clean, super-clean, huge and combo. And, because each basic move could only be scored once it meant that if you did a blunt, air blunt and a clean blunt you would only be scored blunt + air bonus + clean bonus, rather than also scoring the blunt part each time. This meant you may as well get your move done in one go: clean air blunt and then move onto something else. 

It seemed to work quite well though we didn't really test the combo bonuses as the wave was a bit flushy to do combo moves. These could prove to be quite complicated - if a combo bonus can only be scored once for each basic move what if the 2nd part of the combo is different each time?? We didn't need to answer that question though as the situation didn't arise, but hopefully the IFC will think about that before publishing their appendix. There were definitely a few other questions that arose as well - the answers to which also weren't clearly stated. Hopefully that will all get sorted with some tweaking before the Worlds in Switzerland! 

The squirt rules were a bit of a mess as well and I don't think they were used as was written - I believe there is a major typo in the IFC rules which means that just a second or two difference in downtime is so heavily weighted in its calculation that it could potentially score at least 2000 points more than any perfectly executed flatwater ride! There have been suggestions of using just a weighted carbon shell as if these rules are used the flatwater rides will basically become redundant and it will all be about who can hold onto the bottom of the river for the longest!! Health and safety issues -surely?? I believe Ben White (squirt judge) used a slightly more sensible system, but again hopefully this will get sorted in time for the Worlds and before people start to make their own carbon sinking machines!! 

Thanks to Cam for the photos. Unfortunately my camera battery had minimal juice in it - hence all the photos of me, just me! I'm sure photos of other people will be posted somewhere. 

Full results will be posted on UKFreestyle.com