British Wildwater Selections 2023 (1/3)

Like all good things (and small intestines) this year’s wildwater selections comes in three parts. The first of which was just held this weekend up at Grandtully.

Scenically situated along the river Tay, the Grandtully slalom site is just a little bit too far from almost everywhere in the UK. Nevertheless it is here that the frigid Scottish waters tumble down the valley to form a rare thing in the UK: a whitewater river with barely any rocks! (The exception being the one rather large rock). And it is here that the first third of the 2023 British Wildwater selection races took place.

The startline and Jacob in his camouflage whopper

The selection policy is (almost) simple. There are three selection events, each with a sprint and a longer distance classic race. There are 3 international events, but not all with a classic. For each race you are awarded points for your position, 1st gets 25, 2nd gets 19, and third gets 14 with points declining exponentially-ish as you go on. All the points get added up and the best 4 paddlers for each category (MK1, WK1, MC1, …) are selected. However not all selection races count towards all the international races, and for the world cups 6 people can go. With this in mind I believe the best tactic for selections is to just try as hard as you can in everything and then work out which trips you can afford to go on later.

The weekend at Tully followed a familiar format, sprints on Saturday (best of 2 runs) and the Classic on Sunday. I traveled up the Tully Thursday evening to get in some sneaky practice on the Friday, letting Scotland put the ‘remote’ into ‘remote working’. I’d brought with me the new boat, which looks very dashing and is significantly less leaky than my old one. Jealous eyes declared it the ‘spiderman boat’ or ‘naff captain america’. Either way you’ll now hear me shouting ‘Avengers Assemble!’ whenever our team run formation starts falling apart.

Unfortunately my beautiful Sicario had only arrived in the UK two weeks prior, thanks to a shipping headache created by the “B-that-must-not-be-named”. This led to a fairly manic week of trying to outfit the boat while it dominated my small flat. Fortunately, my panic prevailed and I more or less managed to fit the footrest and knee foam in time for at least a couple of sessions on the flat before I departed for Scotland.

Above, the new boat takes over my flat. (Cardboard was used for templating the footest and was not the final product!)

However, this did mean that the Friday in Scotland was the first day I actually paddled the boat on ‘the rough’. Coincidentally this was also when I discovered that I hadn’t quite gotten everything to how I wanted it. Thus, despite some Friday fiddling, I found myself duct-taping additional foam hip pads into the boat with less than 20 minutes before my first sprint run. This is definitely not the best race prep I’ve ever done, yet it somehow wasn’t the worst or most chaotic pre-race I’ve had.

Unfortunately even with my last minute additions, my sprint results were a little disappointing. This wasn’t all too surprising given I was (or am) still getting used to the handling of the new boat and while I managed to mostly put the boat where I wanted it, I was struggling to find the power throughout the run. Still while it stung to be so far off the pace, I’m sure this will come with some time. Plus, Sunday was the classic, and classics are my jam.

We awoke Sunday fueled with a lovingly cooked family meal and fearful of forecasts of snow and sub-zero temperatures. Daylight savings had cruelly robbed us of an hour of precious sleep, but being as knackered as we were we’d mostly passed out around 9pm anyway. As we loaded kit into cars the weather was not nearly as frightful as forecast, but Scotland by and large had not received the notification that it was now officially Spring. This led to some debate on the shuttle as to what to wear for the race and emboldened by anything above 2⁰C I opted for a shorty kag. Mostly, hoping that the threat of hypothermia would encourage me to get to the finish just that little bit quicker.

Phtotos from the weekends’ racing

I like classic racing. The longer distance just gives me a bit of time to settle into the race and I can focus on just getting the boat running well. That said I definitely spent the first few minutes of this race cursing Alex as his prophesied tail wind manifested itself as biting head wind, freezing hands and sucking all the speed from the boat. But once I’d dropped further into the rapids I found my ‘happy’ place and began to feel comfortably at home in the new boat. This all seemed to pay off and having navigated the main Tully rapid with an appropriate amount of “face melt” I crossed the line to claim a 2nd place and the 19 points it brings. Hopefully this should be enough to get me to Euros…

Arguably more important than my position was that with a time of 14:31.69 I’d beaten Kerry. This has become a bit of a running joke amongst the senior men but having beaten all the boys at the last couple of events she’s actually a real threat (and a lovely training partner). Honestly, I’m not quite comfortable with my 10s margin on a 14 minute race!

Selections part 2 of 3 comes this weekend at Nottingham’s own HPP, which will be the decider for the Senior, U23 and Junior worlds. Tune in to the next blog post for a slightly delayed recap of events!

Photos by the lovely Dave Singleton

Full Results on https://www.wildwater.org.uk/

Team GB and the Weather

We here at the River Stench secret lair have been avidly watching the Olympic games after the past few weeks and were over the moon when Joe Clarke secured a gold medal in the Men’s K1 Slalom. Everyone except for the dog that is, who didn’t really understand what we were whooping and wailing about.

13873016_10154505718834363_7365444630547235331_n — Joe Clarke on the podium. Photo credit: Balint Vekassy

After a slow start to the games team GB seem to be in full flow today (pun intended) with 2 gold and 3 Bronze medals earned today at time of writing. The other noticeable occurrence today is in Rio the weather has been terrible; wet and windy all day. Or as we like to call it British. Quickly the River Stench’s scientists put together the following graph:

Now as we all know correlation always means causation therefore we can assume that the very British weather is providing team GB with the extra boost they need and is entirely responsible for the day’s success.

One of the more interesting aspects of this data occurs when we extrapolate it. In London team GB won 65 medals over 14 days of glorious sunshine. From our current data we see an increase in medals won of 800% in foul weather. Therefore we can conclude that had it rained for the entirety of the London games, team GB would have won 520 medals in total or roughly 54% of all medals available at the 2012 Olympic games. From this I would strongly recommend the British government to investigate cloud seeding before the Tokyo games or at least dispatch a bunch of people with water pistols to the next games.

BUCS Pole Dancing 2016

Nobody looked back. All that could be herd was the scraping of salvage, the vague clinking of medallions, and the silent sizzle of snow falling upon the ashes of Whitby .

It is with much joy that after 3 weeks of playing with elastic bands I am back in a boat. Fortunately I managed to pull a speedy recovery just in time for the BUCS Slalom, one of 3 competitions which more or less decide our funding from the university for next year. Now normally slalom is my least favourite out of all of the BUCS event, all of which are generally characterised by being cold, wet, miserable and remarkably little time in a boat. However this year with it considering with my re-entry to a kayak, on Friday evening I found myself bubbling with excitement outside the boat stores, despite being unable to shake the hangover from an impromptu and ill-advised excursion the night before.

All the familiar faces were there in varying states of enthusiasm; Caleb, Cole, Sam, Tom. While all of us were no strangers to the world of moving water for most this would be their first experience of pointy boats and poles, a strange and archaic discipline far from the stumpy plastic tubs most are familiar and comfortable with.

Partick looking stern. Photos by Tom Clare (www.fb.com/tomclarephoto)

Meanwhile silhouetted to the side was a different breed. A breed of paddler that we had only heard of in rumours, tales and tweets from the SU. These were the prem slalom paddlers. Solitary creatures, university slalom paddlers often prefer to train alone and rarely participate in club activities. Sometimes you may spot clues of such a paddler; a boat left on a car, university branded stash at the local course, but it is entirely possible to sit next to slalom paddler in lectures for an entire year without realising until someone persuades them to come to the BUCS event.

All this is not to say that they are not bad people. In fact, if this weekend was anything to go by, they can be a lot of fun. Even if they might occasionally try to throw you into an open grave. This is a story that I would love to recall in its entirety. The events leading to this and escalating from it are guaranteed to be engrained into club legend alongside the incineration of the first aid kit, and the grand Jelly wrestling championships. Tragically this tale of priests, pirates, pensioners and lobster pots is probably a little too RAW to tell here so instead I will ramble about the actual paddling.

Fortunes in canoe slalom are as changeable as Yorkshire’s weather and races are won and lost on the smallest of errors. As such I am pleased to announce an excellent performance by the University of Nottingham at this years at the BUCS canoe slalom event held on the Tees Barrage International White Water Centre.

Saturday saw the men’s K1 Event which was won by Jonathan Atkinson, shortly followed by Sam Moss (6^th), Pete McColl (7^th), Ibbotson (11^th) and Patrick Marriot (12^th). Strong efforts were also given by the non-slalom paddlers from the university with beginners such as Cole O’Brien successfully navigating the testing* course. I myself am particularly happy with snatching 24^th place despite that pesky shoulder dislocation just 3 weeks prior.

This was shortly followed by the mixed team event, where 3 paddlers must weave through the gates simultaneously starting and finishing within 15 seconds of each other. This however was of little problem to our team of Sam Ibbotson (C1), Amy Hollick (K1) and Patrick Marriot (C1) who raced down the course to finish in solid 3^rd place and cap off an excellent days slalom.

Sunday was an even bigger days racing, featuring the WK1, WC1, MC1, MC2 and Men’s team even. Sore from the day before the team awoke to find the weather was not on their side alternating between rain, sleet, hail and snow with the brief taunting moments of blue sky. With so many events keeping warm was between runs becoming as hard as the slalom itself.

Keeping warm on the water. Photos by Tom Clare (www.fb.com/tomclarephoto)

Setbacks occurred early on as Jonathon Atkinson and Peter McColl swam out of their C2, for what is quickly becoming Pete’s annual bath. Numerous paddlers from all Universities struggled in the C boat categories before Sam Ibbotson and Patrick Marriot showed everyone how it was done, placing 1^st and 6^th respectively.

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Meanwhile Amy was off snatching positions in the WK1 & WC1 finishing 3^rd and 4^th. Adele Read also put in and excellent performance for her first slalom making full use of the practice time to finish in a respectable 36^th place.

Adele hunting for submerged gates. Photos by Tom Clare (www.fb.com/tomclarephoto)

The final event was the weekend was the men’s team runs. Due to Tom Clare suffering a shoulder injury a last minute substitution was made and once again Sam Ibbotson, Marriot and Amy Hollick set off now with Sam and Patrick in K1s and Amy in a C1 to claim 4^th place. The second team featuring Jonathan Atkinson, Sam Moss and Pete McColl set off shortly after looking to reclaim some pride and dignity after the fiasco in the C-boats. Whether they truly found this is unknown however it is suspected that their 1^st place and gold medals did sooth their swims.

Jonathan/Sam/Pete on the team run. Photos by Tom Clare (www.fb.com/tomclarephoto)

Overall an excellent time was had by all, the University of Nottingham finished in 2^nd, above Trent (3^rd), but behind Loughborough who took 1^st. Despite this the University of Nottingham claimed the most medals out of any university almost achieving one in every category. Hopefully similar results can be achieved at the upcoming National Student Rodeo, BUCS Wild Water Race and BUCS Canoe Polo in the upcoming months.

Ant Mitchell in C-boats. Occasionally featuring me in the the front.

River Stench

Kayaks and irreverent misadventures, from in and around the water.

Category: Competitive paddling

British Wildwater Selections 2023 (1/3)

Team GB and the Weather

BUCS Pole Dancing 2016

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