European Champs, Lienz - Training

I am out in Lienz, Austria to see if I can defend my European Freestyle Championship title. The hole is fickle, and so is the weather: Rain/sun/rain/sun; Flush/stick/flush/stick. Most people are finding a really good run is often followed by several immediate super-clean flushes - unfortunately I have perfected that move quite well! However, I'm starting to work out the sweet spot on the feature and there is a small window of 'stickiness' which I'm working on.

Super clean flush :)










The queues so far have been amazingly quiet, mainly because the feature is flushy (therefore people take turns quickly) and the eddy is horrible to sit in so the queues have to max out at about 10-15 paddlers. It also seems that quite a high proportion of the 170 competitors are yet to turn up. I have timed it perfectly so far with just 4-5 people in the eddy every time I have got on! Even our team training session today was fairly quiet as we have a couple of team members still to arrive and this year no travelling reserves.

In the men's category the bigger scoring moves seem to be going well on some rides, flushy on others. But there doesn't seem to be much opportunity to link moves. Pringle, straight from his world cup win, is paddling well, with some precise McNasties and relatively long rides.












Loops and felixes seem to be the biggest scoring consistent moves with the ladies, with an occasional McNasty/Phonix monkey thrown in - although very few of these seem to be sticking/scoring. I'm currently trying to make sure my loop doesn't finish in a flush exit move. I think more active 'grrrr' is going to help - I'm lacking in it a bit at the moment (too much working, not enough paddling makes for a lack of grrr!) I'm sure I'll find some somewhere by the time prelims start on Wednesday.





"Flea tried to stay patient, as once again she had to explain to the new GB assistant team Mgr: 'no, they are not trying to get upstream'!"






Photos: Dave Newport