Campbell Walsh - Qualification + Quarter Finals at the Euros

Saturday, June 11, 2011

Some readers may be wondering what a Quarter final is? That is because there hasn't ever been one at a race before. Somebody at the ECA decided it would be good to introduce an extra 1-run round, on the same day as the Qualification race.

The way it worked was a normal, best of 2-runs, Qualification round, with the top 40 K1 men to progress. Then another 1-run on the same course where those 40 would fight for the 20 places in the semi final on Sunday.

Not surprisingly, most of the top ranked paddlers were easily inside the top 40 qualifying places after first runs. So most, myself included, opted to skip the 2nd run in order to conserve energy for the harder prospect that was the Quarter Final round. In total, 14 of the best K1 paddlers did not get on the water for the 2nd run, creating large gaps, leaving the commentator with nothing to commentate on and the spectators nothing to watch!!! Maybe if there had been some consultation with the athletes about the program changes, we would have advised that this would most likely be the outcome and the embarrassment could have been avoided.

As for my racing, I was happy with my 1st qualification run, placing 4th with 92.9/. The most pleasing aspect was that I felt there was definitely time to be found in the run, and I could be challenging the lead time of 91.6 by Vavra. With most of the top ranked paddlers not doing the 2nd run, the top 5 remained the same.

My Quarter Final run a disappointment. The bottom half didn't have the flow or style I wanted and I gradually lost time everywhere, posting a slower 95.0. Still, I made it through in 14th place, so will try to get back in the groove in the semi-final on Sunday. Young Jiri Prskavec, who is still a junior (under 18), showed why he deserves his place on the Czech senior team, impressively winning the quarter final round.

We also had a 1-run Qualification run for team racing today! We (myself, Richard and Huw) had a solid clean run, putting us 3rd in an incredibly tight race. The highest place team to get a 2 second penalty was 7th! And even then, they were only 2.28 seconds down on 1st place!!