Another beautiful, sunny day in Čunovo is behind us. The third day was reserved for Slalom for Open Men and Women and Downriver for the U19, U23 and Masters’ divisions.
The first slalom race brought us two flips and one surf in a hole just before the end of the track. There was some swimming for the paddlers, a little action for the rescue team, but it all ended well for the athletes which is the most important. Only pride was a little hurt.
The track was technically demanding and this could be seen in the teams’ first run, but their second runs were much better at passing the upstream and downstream gates. After the last run, in the women’s we found SVK1 and CZE1 had the same lap time. In the end SVK1 team took a convincing first place, with CZE1 next and GBR1 in third.
In the men’s competition CZE2 had the best lap time but had more penalties than CZE1 which cost them the title they were defending and found them in third place at the end. In second place were the Russians only three seconds behind, but without touching any gates.
Downriver starts are in groups, and the first to start were the U19 men, then the Masters men, U19 women, Masters Women, U23 Women and U23 Men went last as they were the largest group. It was not easy to paddle in the flat water, then run the raft up the hill to get back onto the course and then do the circuit again three times. You could see that some teams were really suffering to breath after the uphill running by the third round. But they all finished, and it was a great success – we congratulate them for this endurance test!
Day four will be Slalom for the U19, U23 and Masters divisions and the Downriver for the Open teams – watch live. It will be an exciting day like yesterday. After the race teams are having fun on the field with volleyball, football, and there was an organized party, surfing contest … a lot is on offer at “Divoka water”
Good paddle strokes for all.
