WORLD CHAMPS 2010 B-Final 7th

Being at a World Champs is something amazing. Standing around and racing the worlds best paddlers fills you with such energy you cant describe. Unfortunatly the weather turned for the worst with rain and strong winds hitting the course making it very unpleasent to be on the water but as we always say, "you cant choose race conditions". We had 3 heats and 2 semis to make it through to a final. We didnt have the greatest race and struggled to find the rythem but squeezed into the B-Final by 0.2sec. Having only squeezed into the B-final we new we had to prove to ourselves that we were better than that and have a better final race. We had an awesome start and held it right the way through to finish 7th. We had now beaten crews that we had never beaten before and were alot closer to the winners aswell.

Last paddling session before boats head to Poznan

PW, Len, Fouche, Tiff, Gavin and Chrisjan

After the training session we decided to see how good our core was. We had seen the British girls do the same the day before they left and thought we could give it a shot. We made it up and down but rather wobbly

This morning we had our last paddling session as the boats are being put on the trailer this afternoon for Poznan. It has been an exciting 3weeks here in Hungary with the team and all is going really well till date. The hotel is empty as all the other teams have left for Poznan already or gone home for a few days. We unfortunatly dont live close enough so have stayed an extra 2days.

Budapest Site Seeing

Bridgett, Chrisjan, Calvin and Gavin

PW and Chrisjan struggling to pay for a train ticket cause the machine wouldnt accept all there coins and held up a bunch of people waiting to purchase tickets.

One of Budapests beautiful bridges crossing the Danube river which seperates Buda from Pest.

Zoli and his team

PW & Chrisjan at Hungarian F1 Grand Prix

PW and Chrisjans outing to the Hungarian F1 Grand Prix on Sunday. They took a risk by going to the track without having bought tickets before hand. It was an extra 45min trip from Budapest so it could of been a long day on the trains with no result but it paid off and they had the most awesome time.

Its been almost a week that we have been in Hungary and with our only rest day this week we decided to go to Budepest, the capital of Hungary. We were told its a 2km walk to the train station where we will later hop onto a tram and end up on the outskirts on Budepest. Shouldnt take longer than an hour they said. WELL, just over an hour walk in the heat we found the train station and another 2 hours later we were in Budepest. At this point the team split with PW and Chrisjan heading to the Hungarian F1 Grand Prix and myself, Fouche and Tiffany staying in Budepest. When we arrived we met up with Bridgett Hartley our 500m and 1000m K1 women paddler. She is based here for most of the year to train with her coach Nandor Almasi. We had a look at the area she stays in and walked around town having a look at some awesome old buildings, monuments and other amazing structures. As the day dragged on we got one message from the guys at the Grand Prix to say they having a blast but struggling with the noise from the cars. Will hopefully get a detailed breakdown from the guys on how there experience was.