Third time’s a charm: Mezzana 2025 European Championships

Last year the River Noce was high. And I mean really high. In the UK we don’t get that much steep big water. It’s a different style of paddling from what we are used to but what shocked me most was the sheer power behind the water. Not half way through the classic race and my forearms were so pumped that gipping my paddles was a challenge and pulling them back against the heavy water was near impossible. So, when it was announced that the river Noce would host the 2025 European championships I knew I had to do one thing: Get strong.

This blog has a tendency to get a little sparse over the winter months. That’s not because I’m not paddling, far from it in fact. The UK Wildwater calendar is at its busiest over the wet season, but its also the time of year where I tuck myself away and focus on training for the biggest events of the year.

I’m a paddler at heart. I enjoy being out on the water more than anything else, even through the tough winter months. But paddling isn’t always the best way to get stronger so this winter I beat a retreat to the warm sanctuary of the gym. That’s not to say that I did no paddling (I still paddled nearly once every day), but rather I shifted the focus to lifting up big heavy things in the hope it’d help with the big alpine water. The gym is less fun than paddling but Tamsyn McConchie, my bestest gym buddy, was on hand to keep the fun, motivation and discipline alive.

But winter wasn’t all about getting “swole”. For every one part of fitness, racing requires another 2 parts of skill. From my marathon days, I’ve always been reasonably good on the flat, but (and despite all my plastic boating) translating that onto whitewater has always been a bit of a challenge. The answer to that is simple though, more boat time! And not just more boat time, but maximising the time spent on the rough.

We were fortunate with the rain this year and scored a massive high water day on the Dee, and another on the Dart. Comically on the Dart, the water didn’t come until we’d finished racing. But we hung around and ran laps and laps and laps until the light faded and our bodies couldn’t take another run. It was a very good day!

Over the winter it seemed nearly every weekend was spent paddling a different river, and when we weren’t away I’d be on our local whitewater course at HPP. As spring dawned and we regained some light in the evenings, resistance sessions dropped off the plan to give way to Dalek Mondays – A sessions featuring attainments and sprints down the bottom “Daleks” section of HPP. I could already feel the benefits of the time spent in the gym with an ability to grip the water like never before.

By the time selections rolled around I was feeling reasonably confident. Once again it was the now familiar trip up to Grandtully. The result: A decent enough classic (3rd) but 5th in the sprint – probably my best ever sprint result. Combined they were enough to book my ticket to the European Championships.

On the evening of the 30th of May and elite strike group departed the UK. Said strike group was comprised of Myself, Freddie Brown as well as Kerry and Emma Christie – basically everyone who’d raced the previous year and understood just how challenging the river could be.

When we arrived in Mezzana we were met with a very different river to the one we had left behind the previous year. The high water (or potentially some diggers) had moved around some of the larger rocks on the river bed, changing some of the racing lines, most dramatically on the sprint course.

The other noticeable difference was the river levels which were dramatically lower than the year previous. High water is a relatively rare occurrence, but the extent of the difference came as a surprise, with the Noce being transformed into a rock dodging obstacle course.

We set about figuring out the lines and adjusting to the fast flowing water. The slightly lower level suited us. The water was still a lot heavier than anything in the UK but it wasn’t too much of leap. That said the level was far from static, often rising and falling over 10cm between laps. Fortunately this changed the character of the river more that it did the lines but after a week of paddling on the Noce we were starting to feel happy with it at any level.

One thing that was harder to adapt to was the altitude. Mezzana sits at nearly 1000m. While that’s not an extreme altitude in and of itself, it is almost 1000m higher than Nottingham, and it really showed whenever we tried to pull hard. Through adrenaline and altitude, I seemed to screech up to my maximum HR on nearly every session, and it took a fair bit of focus to pull it under control.

By the time the second half of the team arrived we’d just about got everything figured out – and then the heavens opened and the river began to rise. Once again we found the character of the Noce shifting and changing. There were no major changes to lines, but as waves steepened and stoppers flushed out we could take on a little bit more this or afford to be a little less left of that. But slowly the paddling shifted from the familiar rock gardens to big volume and high power water.

By the time classic day arrived the river had risen to 0.85m and we got a familiar message from the race organisers: The water was too high for the sprint course and the classic would now finish at the bridge above it, rather than the bottom of the sprint course. It was a mixed feeling around the British team – the sprint is a brilliant section of water and we all wanted to race it, but given how heavy the classic felt already, we’d probably wouldn’t miss it all that much.

Unfortunately my classic didn’t quite go to plan. It started strong-ish (once I got off the awkward starting raft). It seemed as if all the strength work had paid off, at least it did until I got to about the half way point. All of a sudden the wheels feel off. As I struggled within the waves I made a few surprise line decisions with empty arms carrying me to previously unexplored areas of the river. The result: 31st. Not great, not terrible. Possibly still not strong enough.

Following a strange schedule, Thursday, the second day of the competition would hold both the team sprint and team classic races. This left us with an interesting problem as we normally decide the members for the team run based off of our individual results. We could follow the normal approach for the team classic, but we wouldn’t be doing our individual sprint runs until Friday. After some “discussion” we concluded that the best way to decide the team would be to hold our own little time trial.

The river had dropped slightly following the classic and our contacts on the inside said, we’d likely be back on the sprint course proper for the team racing. So, after a brief lunch break, we returned to the top of the sprint for our time trial. The rules were simple: Best of two runs, fastest 3 paddlers would be in the sprint team.

My first run went a little askew. A raft was out training and nearly pulled out in front of me. Collision narrowly avoided, I brought the run home into 4th, less than half a second behind Alex, but still in 4th place. Safe for now, Alex, Freddie and Huw waited for me to do my second run. Pressure on, but raft no longer a factor, I pulled as hard as I could muster and shaved more than a second off my time. I was now sat in 2nd, just behind Huw and it was Alex and Freddie in the hot seat. Unfortunately for me both Alex and Freddie managed to improve their times, landing me back down in 4th. But the racing was close with less than 0.03s between Alex and myself. Next to nothing on hand timing, but the result is the result and I conceded the place in the team race. Still the race practice was invaluable and we all felt fired up for the races the following day.

The Thursday kicked off with the sprint team race, which can only be described as carnage. With minimal practice on the proper sprint course even the top teams were struggling. The mix of white water and washes always makes team racing difficult, and Mezzana is an extremely difficult course. Across the board there were some ‘creative’ lines as paddlers found themselves carried offline to undesirable locations. Unfortunately both the British women’s and men’s teams suffered spin outs. At one point Alex and Huw found themselves virtually on top of each other, leading to Huw spinning out just before the finish, inevitably leading to a DSQ, as the 3 teammates failed to finish within 15 seconds of each other.

It was a disappointing result but it lit a fire under us for the team classic that afternoon. We picked our running order from the classic times. Freddie would lead, I’d follow and Huw would bring up the rear, hopefully being able to use his burn to close any gaps at the end. The plan worked a charm, off the start I stuck to Freddie like a magnet. Following him down was like a master class in big water boating, and down the bigger bit he acted like my own personal Mosses, parting the waves for me. However after the half way point again I started to faulter, and instead of remaining on Freddie’s wash I started acting like a bungee as I fell off and then had to fight to get back. Everything came to a bit of a head down the gorge where I missed Freddie’s lunge to the right and I ended up stuck on the wrong side down the left. The mistake put several boat lengths between us, meanwhile Huw had gotten lost further back. We had to ease of the gas a little to regroup as we headed down towards the sprint course that made up the final leg of the classic.

The lesson from the morning was clear, leave each other room, but not too much room down this difficult section. At this point I was blowing steam out of my ears as I attempted not to let Freddie pull too far ahead, but we managed it. As we crossed the finish line my forearms were so blown I briefly lost hold of my paddles, but Huw closed the gap on the line and I managed to pull myself back together narrowly avoiding a little dip in the river. We came in 8th place, very respectable and a big improvement over the morning.

Unfortunately my detour down the left hand side of the gorge had put a not insubstantial hole in my race boat. This left a slightly bitter taste in my mouth as I realised I’d be spending a slightly stressful evening doing boat repairs. Last minute boat repairs are part and parcel of a river racing trip. Over the course of the week I was far from the only one with the angle grinder out – Phil and Andrew had to improvise a new skeg one evening after the river claimed the original one from their C2.

My hole, was in the tail, which is an infamously difficult area repair as the boat geometry gets all funky and you can no longer use square patches. Fortunately I’d spent the trip spectating Freddie, our resident composites experts on all of his repairs and, after a brief consultation, I set about my work. The rest of the team departed for the classic/team prize giving (Kerry and Emma picked up a silver the the WC2) but by the time they returned I had finished one of the cleanest repairs I’ve ever done – although it did turn out to still leak a little so I had to redo it once I got home!

Kerry and Emma collect their C2 classic bronze

I’m not sure if I slept much that night before the sprint heats but it didn’t matter because the mood down at the sprint course was electric. The Mezzana Sprint course is difficult. But that difficulty brings an air of possibility. Mistakes are costly, but anyone could make one, and that means opportunities for all.

Simon Oven of Slovenia, and winner of the MK1 classic, demonstrated this best during his first sprint run. One small mistake dramatically pinned him up against ‘Freddie’s Rock’ to an audible gasp from the onlooking crowd. Fortunately, he managed to work his way off and rectified the mistake in his 2nd run

Somehow, amongst the chaos of the sprint course I managed to put down two pretty solid runs of 1’00.41 and 1’01.30. Still a way off the finals but it did land me with another 31st place (there must be something special about that position) but 3rd Brit, quite the achievement for a classic specialist.

The big dogs above must have been very impressed, as after my 2nd run I was invited to do commentary for the remainder of the runs. With Jamie Christie as my partner in auditory crime, we attempted to spice up the live stream with all our insider knowledge on which waves contained the hardest rocks. Of course we promptly gave the commentators curse to nearly anyone we complemented. Our friend Jan Sindelar, was maybe the hardest done by the curse. Jamie had been praising his clean paddling style just before he got dumped into a hole. Although Luca Barone came a close second with my compliments on his sprinting pushing him into every rock on the course. We may have also called Tjaš Til Kupsch ‘the smallest of the Slovenians’, a comment he called me up on while towering over me at the after party. Strangely they didn’t ask us to do commentary for the finals…

The rest of the British team posted some strong times but not quite strong enough to make the finals, with both Freddie and Huw missing it by the skin of their teeth. Only the C2s ended up qualifying for the last day of the competition, a slightly disappointing end to an otherwise fantastic trip.

Except for it wasn’t the end. Just because the racing stops, doesn’t mean the fun does! The 1993 world championship course has become the stuff of legend. Starting further down the Noce than the current course, it is bigger steeper and even less forgiving. We’d run it a couple of years back much to the envy of some of the other teams, and with no racing for everyone except the C2s we began eyeing it up again.

Over a couple of end of competition beers messages were sent out to rally the troops, most notable to Sasha from Czechia who’d dubbed us the crazy Brits when she spotted us paddling the section last time – high praise from the crazy Czech!

The next morning, after a little bit of miscommunication, we gathered at the start of the 93′ Classic course. The river was looking higher than the last time we’d paddled it putting a few people off. But we still had a tough little troop of myself, Jamie Christie, Freya Pryce and Sasha soon-to-be-Biscuit. As we’d been waiting for Sasha to arrive I’d found a massive hole in the bottom of my practice boat and was desperately duct-taping it to try and plug the leak, but as we put on it seemed like it may just hold.

The 93′ Classic starts innocuously enough. A few fun rapids but nothing too much to write home about. Then you come to a weir. Its’s an awkward drop but there is a clean-ish line to be found on the left. After the weir the bimbley rapids continue for a short while, lulling you into a false sense of security. But then by a bridge the river just drops away. The gradient increases, the waves tower above your head, and it doesn’t stop. No flat bits to recollect yourself, no pauses to catch your breath, just rapid after rapid after rapid.

Jamie led the group down with Freya and Sasha following in tow, while I formed the rear guard. That was until Jamie over cooked it on one of the turns and span out, leaving Freya, a relatively green paddler to find her own way down one of the steepest sections. Fortunately Sasha managed to find a sneaky overtake amongst the waves and holes to come to the rescue. Jamie, made it back out into the flow behind me, and we kept this order skirting past holes big enough to clean my arm pits all the way to the get out.

The mood at the end was ecstatic, with grins stretched across everyone’s faces. Sasha proclaimed it was the best river she’d ever paddled, and it was even better than… – well I won’t say. It had been difficult but we’d all survived in one piece and a new found respect for the paddlers of old.

We returned to the sprint course to cheer on our C2s and then it was time to pack our bags. It was hard not too feel a little sad as we prepared to depart. 2 weeks had flown by and I didn’t feel ready to leave the mountains behind. We started saying our fond farewells at prize giving, comparing stories of lines gone wrong, catching flack for some of my commentating and boasting of our run down the 93′ classic course. There were some beers, a band and some dancing. Then a long walk home, before the long drive back to the UK.

At some point someone said some kind-ish words to me: “It is so good to see you all trying so hard. You’re still not very good, but you are improving and improving. You always come from so far a way, with so much enthusiasm and it is an inspiration to all of the other small nations.”

I think he meant the bit about being us being shit in a good way? But overall the sentiment seemed positive. Mezzana is perhaps my favourite place to race, and while it’s not currently on the calendar for next year, I’m crossing my fingers that there may be a last minute addition. Maybe even on the 93′ course…

Mezzna World Cup

The road from Augsburg to Mezzana is stunning. Or, at least the bits I could hold my eyes open for were. After a weeks excitement I couldn’t help nodding off in the van, but as always the majesty of the mountains transfixed my attention as we crossed the Brenner Pass.

I’d been lucky enough to paddle Mezzana just a couple of weeks earlier on my grand plastic Fantastic tour of Italy and Austria. Then I’d rocked up completely oblivious as to our destination only to be greeted with a large sign advertising the event we were now competing in. While I’d only managed a couple of laps on that flying visit it was almost comforting returning to a river I was acquainted with. Even more comforting to see the level had risen to cover a few more rocks!

The scheduled called for racing to start on Thursday with the classic. We’d arrived late Sunday evening after the long drive giving us just a meager 3 days to learn the long, continuous course.

Racing is hard. That shouldn’t really come as a surprise, but not many people realise that thinking is harder. But, what is really difficult is doing both at the same time. They seem to pull from the same limited pool of human effort. The harder you pull in the race, the less thinking juice is available. And, as tiredness sets in, concentration begins to lapse. Lapses in concentration lead to mistakes. Mistakes cost time and cruelly require more effort to fix. This combination can easily snowball into a catastrophic race run, and therefore we practice.

We try to learn every rock, every wave, every little flow ladder the river has to offer. The aim is to know the river like the back of your hand. So, come race day, you can be all pull and no think. But, in practice this is quite hard.

This image doesn’t fit neatly into the story but I’ll be damned if I don’t post it

On Monday we did 4 four classic runs. Two in the morning, two in the afternoon. (I did the first two in the whopper to probe out all the rocks). On tuseday we did 3, two in the morning, one in the afternoon. Finally on Wednesday we just did one in the morning, resting up in the afternoon before race day.

A grand total of 8 laps. But is that really enough to learn a continuous 17minute course? No. And if you think otherwise you’re a cocky little dickhead.

The first 2-3 runs generally get you acquainted with the river. Another few runs and you’ll probably have worked our roughly where the racing lines are. Then You’ll need at least a couple more laps to glue everything together and we’ve not even thought about optimising the line yet. Is it quicker to sneak the other side of that rock, do you need to be a half-foot further over to avoid those waves? Needless to say commiting a whole classic course to memory is no easy task.

Mezzana went loosely like this for me:

Run 1 – Oh my god where the hell am I?
Run 2 – Yep I still don’t recognise it
Run 3 – Ah, I recognise this bit and I did not want to be here
Run 4 – Okay, yeah I want to be there next time
Run 5 – What the hell there’s a rock here too!
Run 6 – Yep, nice, got this bit dialed. But do we go left now, or slightly less left
Run 7 – Finally, I think I’ve got it all stuck together, I just need to avoid that rock at the start.
Run 8 – Fucks sake, how do I keep hitting this rock?

Fortunately we’ve got a secret weapon: head cams [INSERT YOUR BRAND HERE (pretty, pretty please sponsor me)] Head cams are an invaluable tool for helping to learn both classics and sprints. Paddling is hard work, and watching back head cam footage is an easy way to squeeze in extra laps without destroying your body.

In between groaning and lying on the floor, evenings on the British team are often spent reviewing the days footage. We debate lines, identify and fix mistakes and crucially revise the river until it becomes a part of our souls. It’s kinda like F1 drivers practicing on the sim but with a much lower budget!

We had a little bit of fun learning the lines at Mezzana (alpine rivers have a very different characteristics to our brown British rivers), but by the time classic day arrived I was feeling pretty confident with the lines.

Unfortunately though it wasn’t my race. While I put the boat exactly where I wanted it (bar a smallish mistake at the end). The fast flowing alpine water was very heavy on my forearms which began to cramp up by about the half way mark. This combined with the dreggs of an illness and the need for near constant stroke timing through the continuous waves meant I struggled to really put the hammer down. Still I’ve had worse races and this was an excellent chance to get some alpine style water under my belt.

A nice pick me up, came in the form of a raft race that afternoon. We’d noticed it in the schedule on the drive over and had thought it’d be a good lark. When Jamie, out team leader, asked at the briefing about entering there was some umming and ahing from the organisers until they concluded, yes. Yes we could enter.

What we hadn’t realised is that the raft race wasn’t just a mere jolly and was actually part of the rafting world cup. It also wasn’t just the one race, with a raft classic and sprint on the first day of racing. Followed by raft slalom and raft cross in the days after. A lot of bang for our buck of €15 (and we even got bonus stash).

They didn’t even ask how competent we were, which was probably a good thing. Somehow I was the most experienced rafter in our boat, thanks to having actually been in a raft before. Nevermind that was probably 8 years back. Making up the rest of our Men’s ‘British’ boat was Andrew (who paddles C1, which is kinda like a raft), Leon (who’s been in C2s before) and a totally unexperienced American who we’d press ganged into racing. A second British boat was entered into the Mixed category consisting of all three Christies and horary Christie, Rob.

We didn’t exactly fancy ourselves as ringers (not since we discovered it was a world cup), but somehow we didn’t end up finishing last! So the British rafting team better watch their backs!

Doing the raft races the day before sprint heats probably wasn’t the best race prep, but nobody in our team was really targeting the sprint (and the rafting was a lot of fun). However, Andrew still made it through to the Finals in C1 and C2 with Jamie (despite a little dip) and the Christie Girls also qualified their C2 for a final (no dips required).

Maybe one day I’ll make a final too, but I’ve got a lot to improve on the sprint. My heat 1 line was dairly on point, but my technique often seems to fall apart in the heat of the moment. Jamie provided me with some much needed advice for the 2nd run, to avoid upping the rate too high and just focus on connecting with each paddle stroke and pulling hard. This seemed to work wonders but unfortunately my line in the second run took me through a lot of the chop. Still I was only a second slower when compared to the first run, which was a better margin than most of the field. However, I was still a long way off the final. So we’ll just call that another learning experience.

Obviously, the main event for us that day was the raft slalom! It was about as chaotic as you’d expect. There was a lot of ‘constructive’ shouting aboard our raft and between the two run we did manag to get all of the gates! Unfortunately we didn’t manage all of them in a single run, but once again we weren’t last.

Without a team race at the World cups and with no finals for myself this was sadly the last of my racing for the event. But we wouldn’t let that be the last of our paddling. Throught the week Jamie had been remincing of the 1993 World Championships he’d raced in. That race had been held on a different section of river, somewhere bellow Mezzana, and we all (or well mostly) thought it’d be fun to go check this part of the river on finals morning.

This was part of the section I’d paddled previously paddled in a plastic boat. I was again, back in a plastic boat, but now it was a much more lively wavehopper. This turned out to be quite a good decision as the river had dropped a tad, and definitely would have been a bit better with a little more water. But bouncing off rocks was a lot of fun in the wavehopper (although slight less fun for everyone in composite boats) and there were definitely clean lines through everything (bar maybe a big weir drop) but learning them properly would be a lot of work and quite a bit of trial and error. A bit like Treignac really.

Still this was a great section of river and somthing I’d love to paddle again. It was so much fun that (thanks to a small miscommunication) I sailed right past the get out (which I’d previously camped at) and right round the corner! I survived the experience, but Leon who followed me was less than impressed.

We finished off the morning with a couple of farewell classic laps before hanging around to watch the sprint finals and have a couple of well earned beers.

There was also a ‘small’ party which was a nice chance to let loose and get a little better acquainted with the other teams. Although that’s all I’m allowed to say on that…

The only thing left to do on Sunday for Rob, Leon and myself was a leisurely sight seeing drive over to Verona airport. Our underpowered little hire car strained itself to drag us over stunning mountain passes and we had a lovely little dip lake Garda. Inevitably, the flight was delayed into the early hours and I had to sleep on the airport floor before getting into work late on Monday.

10/10 would do again!