Kim takes 4th place
Kim before her final ride in the finals
Today was the finals of all categories. Kim Siekerman was the sole Irish paddler who managed to make it all the way in the senior womens K1 class. The format was superfinals and all the women had poor first rides which made for some anxious moments as Kim had gone first and flushed earlier than she would have liked. Lowri Davies from GB flushed early too before she could do as many moves as Kim and so then there were 4.
Kim went in and laid down some nice spins shuvits and roundhouses before unintentionally executing a text-book McNasty after catching an edge. After the loop part of the move she flushed off the back of the wave and so it wasn't scored. It got some gasps from the crowd however. Fiona "Flea" Jarvie won the womens event in the end. You can read her first hand account of her experience on her blog which she has updated today.
The mens finals was won by Mathieu Dumoulin from France but only just, a lot of people started to have some early flushes in the superfinals including Peter Csonka who ended up in third. Gael Kernin also from France came 2nd and almost took the title after Mathieu Dumoulin flushed early in his final ride but then Gael also flushed early. The French junior who was absolutely killing the competition in the prelims and the semis flushed on a loop for the first time in his very last ride. At this he threw a tantrum on the water throwing his blades away and hitting his boat and cursing "as Francais". Thats what the super finals are all about! Class.
There will be a few drinks had tonight by all concerned parties in the old town. Below is a photo of the Irish team after our final team training session. We will have a better quality version when we get back to Ireland as well as some more photos. It has been another enjoyable international freestyle event. Thats it for this edition. I'll try and get some more idle waffle style blogging up over the next few days. Keepin' er lit out in Ourense this is team Ireland signing off.
The group after final training session
Congrats to all team members, had to laugh at the various things written about the French junior.
On route to the Alps at end of May, we found a very good playwave near Tours in North France and this young guy was throwing incredible moves (compared to everyone else!) and he told me he was the French junior no 1.
He was pissing off a lot of the local lads though with a ridiculous amount of queue skipping and gave his Dad a severe telling off for putting away the video camera when it started raining :)