Opening ceremony and Ladies Prelims

Team GB







The weather went from fickle to persistent cloud with light rain, but thankfully it stayed fairly dry for the opening ceremony, as it was an outside venue.




Team GB on the way to the opening ceremony











I have been to many an opening ceremony in my 12 years (!) of competing for the GB team and the relative lack of faff, the free drinks, free food, short speeches and castle setting all ensured this was a good one.













The heats started yesterday (Wednesday) and a number of categories were up: OC1, Junior men, ladies and C1. I have updated the new GB freestyle website (www.gbfreestylekayak.com) with news of the British team - as a team we had fantastic results.

I spent the whole day yesterday trying not to watch as I was the very last lady of the day and hate watching other people's rides before its my turn. I had a game plan - a loop and a felix were my main moves, which I had been doing consistently in practice rides (with a few spins/cartwheels, whatever I could, thrown in). However, it didn't quite go as planned! I failed to set up properly for the loop in my first ride and flushed straight away (as had many others, so I later found out), I went back in and flushed again without scoring anything. 0 points. Arrggggh. Not a great way to start the 2 rides (especially when both scores are added together).

Sam Ward (team coach) assured me I would still be able to make it through on the 2nd ride, I believed him. Though I was just a little bit (!) nervous at this point and once again I flushed on landing the loop, thankfully after I paddled back up the eddy for yet another try at a loop I managed to stick one - and then got a couple of spins in, instead of the felix I had been hoping for! The loop scored and somehow that was enough to get me into the semi finals - just one air loop in two rides was the cut off for top 10 ladies! Querine Wegman got an air loop in

The feature is certainly flushy and with nerves added this led to a lot of good paddlers failing to score and lots of big names missed out on top 10 places, including recent World Cup medalists, Nina Haslova and Maria Lindgren.

I'll be up again on Friday for the semis.