It was a small but determined team of S&SCC paddlers that headed across to Oughtibridge this weekend. Harry McKenna K1 & C1 Div3, Jessica Croome K1 Div3, Theo Wright K1 Div3, and Finley Croome doing a judges run. Saturdays course was a good one with a couple of potentially tricky gates. Theo had just one job to do and that was win, this would mean promotion and more importantly for Charlotte not having to camp on Saturday night! The prospect of having to spend a stormy night under canvas worked as Theo won both runs, improving on his 2nd run by a second and being clean. Gaining him the all important win and promotion to Div2, well done!
Saturday was only Harrys third day of slalom racing. He had two very good runs in K1 improving by 2 seconds on his 2nd run and making him 15th overall. Then it was into his C1 for his first ever race, the first run was ok but had 4 touches, but he managed to improve his time by 4 seconds on his second run and more importantly was clean. Putting him in 3rd place.
Jess found the course rather tricky at practice, but managed a good time on her first run, but three touches put her in 3rd place. She wasn’t happy with this and was frustrated, inspired by Adam Burgess interview on Radio Stoke the evening before she focused and came back after lunch determined to do better. It worked and she managed to improve her time a little but what made the difference was it was a clean run and she came 1st overall.
After all the individual racing it was Team Races, the boys got themselves together and Jess teamed up with the 2nd and 3rd place girls in her division. After what can only be described as a Wacky Races Demolition Derby of a practice run, expectation for Team Sausage (the boys) wasn’t high! Team Girl Power hadn’t managed a practice but had a strategy at least.
It was with some surprise when the boys executed a really good run, timing the gates perfectly and not getting caught up at all. Girl Power took it steady and had an excellent top half of the course, just getting a little out of shape towards the end. In the end the boys had done enough and took 1st place and the girls came 2nd.
Sunday saw Harry have a very good clean 1st run in his K1, unfortunately he wasn’t able to improve on his second run but it was still an improvement on Saturday position coming in 8th. In his C1 it ended up being very close, with the same time as the 3rd place paddler, but having picked up a 50 on his first run Harry came away in 4th. A very impressive weekend and lots of new experience.
Jess looked like she was going to repeat the success of Saturday and after a clean first run was in 1st place. She wasn’t able to improve her time on her second run, but her competition did and she had to settle for 3rd place. A little disheartened as she had missed out on promotion, but still pleased none the less.
