We first came to Sabero three years ago for the 2021 European championships. At the time just making it there had felt like an achievement. Looking back now, it is crazy to see how far we have all come…

I didn’t make the cut this year for Worlds in K1. I wrote a little about it at the time here. It’s a testament to the increasing standards in the UK, but it also sucked. Fortunately there is a tried and tested strategy for failed kayakers: getting in a canoe.

The canoe has been a long overlooked discipline in the UK, at least within Wildwater. But, thanks to a push from Nicky Cresser, it has started to gain some traction, with the women even seeing just a little bit of success! Us men however, had done our utmost to steer clear of the one bladed witchery. But with a swathe of us missing out on the K1 selection this year, the canoe categories were suddenly our last hope for a holiday in the sun.

Queue the world’s most frantic training montage as, in a matter of a few weeks, I went from wobbling and unable to keep a C1 in a straight line, to just about getting the boat to where I wanted it be and finding a modicum of power. Those early weeks in the canoe were a lot of fun as I leapt up the learning curve. And as the second round ‘canoe selection’ event neared I almost felt confident.

What confidence I did have, had been misplaced. While I finished first out of the non-canoe canoe paddlers at the event, I still didn’t meet the minimum time required by the performance criteria. The minimum performance criteria exist to prevent the UK from sending absolute muppets to World Championships, but with mere weeks under my belt in C1, it appeared that I was still a muppet.

Luckily I hadn’t put all my eggs in the same boat. With a little encouragement from Nicky, Freddie and myself had decided to also enter in C2. Here it seemed our inexperience managed to balance itself out on each side of the boat, leaving nothing but power! – or at least that’s what I told myself. Afterall, false hope is better than no hope. Mercifully we were able to put in some solid-ish races and secured our holiday to the World Champs in Sabero, Spain.

My trip to Sabero started in the traditional fashion. A complex string of planes, trains and buses to transport myself from a wedding in the middle of nowhere to a competition in a different middle of nowhere (this time in Spain). The journey time just scraped under the 20 hour mark, most of which was spent attempting to sleep on whatever seat or floor I could find. But as always it was worth it and I arrived at the team accommodation just in time to find everyone tucking in for our favorite dinner: pasta and shite.

The rest of the team had arrived a few days earlier and that evening we settled down to watch some of the GoPro footage they’d taken and revise lines for the classic. Not that I had to remember that much as I’d be in the rear of our C2 staring at the back of Freddie’s head.

The lines were mostly as I remembered; a mix of wave trains and flat swirly pools. The key, as always, was remembering which corners could be cut and by how much while hunting down all the little flow ladders that could carry the boat speed.

Towards the end of the classic and nearing the start of the sprint was one particularly tricky little rapid where the river fell diagonally off a weir-like ledge. It was a chaotic mix of boiling pools and shallow little ladders which led to a heated debate over the fastest line through the mess. Eventually the consensus settled on staying high over the pool and dropping into the choss towards the end of the weir, but Jamie was quick to add “if you find yourself getting sucked off, just go with it”. I’m 90 percent sure he was talking about the weir but there was no way we weren’t going to mercilessly rip that phase out of context! On the plus side, at least everyone would remember that section.

We’d taken three MC2s out to Sabero, a full team, and the first time we’d had a full MC2 team in recent memory. Out of the three MC2 crews Freddie and I were the most inexperienced. Rob and Jacob had paddled (albeit briefly) together at Treignac and had flirted with C2 a few times since then, while Andrew and Phil had put in at least one solid weekend training together at Stanley. Meanwhile Freddie and I had paddled together at selection. Thus our few days of training before the competition were mostly spent learning how to paddle the boat together.

The C2 is an absolute battleship of a boat. They carry a lot of momentum and once the boat starts tracking off line it can be very difficult to correct it. Jamie says there is a dark art to C2 paddling, and he is right. Between the two of you you must be in agreement about where the boat is going, which edges are needed and maintain stroke timing. The best crews do this almost instinctively. Freddie and I were not quite at that level but over our two days training we managed to mostly coordinate our edges, with cries of ‘left’, ‘right’ and ‘up’ to differentiate our edges from wobbles in the tricker sections.

Arguably the biggest challenge was not getting the boat to run but rather the seating position. Whereas in Kayaks you get a nice comfy seat to sit on, in canoes you kneel. As anyone who’s been in a canoe for more than five minutes can attest to, this can be more than just a little uncomfortable. Even with my regular attendance at NKC’s Canoe Thursdays, I’d finish a classic with dead legs unable to walk. Meanwhile Freddie, not used to spending so much time on his knees, was really suffering. In an attempt to relieve some of the pressure on his legs, Freddie attempted to raise his seat a little, but misguided over where he was perched on the seat, he only succeeded in building himself a little ‘ball plinth’. Eventually through plenty of boat time and some strategic yoga we got ourselves into a state where we would at least survive the classic.

Once the final day of training was over it was time for the opening ceremony. As our accommodation was a good 50 minute drive from the river and the ceremony, we’d elected to hang around after our final afternoon training session and enjoy a picnic in the hot Spanish weather. However, someone clearly forgot to inform the weather of our plan. Instead it had decided to piss it down. Fortunately we’re the British Team and while the weather could dampen our sandwiches it couldn’t dampen our spirits! As the other teams arrived we all huddled under what shelter we could find, enduring their many jokes on how we’d brought the rain. Eventually though there was a break in the weather and after a few speeches in Spanish were loosely translated into English the ICF anthem played and we were all off to bed – only slightly soaked.

Race day started leisurely for the C2 crews. We weren’t racing until 14:00 and as such we relished a rare lie in. Made all the sweeter by the fact the K1s and C1s were forced to depart at the crack of dawn. We caught up with the rest of the team over lunch at the finish. Classic day had already yielded some great results, PBs for many of the team and a silver for Kerry. The first British medal at a senior world championships since 2016. The pressure was on for our C2s!

We should take a second to talk about the MC2 class. It is a class that has been dominated by the French and Czechs for as long as anyone can remember. Maybe one day we’ll be able to challenge them again, but for now they are well out of reach, already locking up the first 7 places between them.  Making up the rest of the start line was a swiss boat, the Germans, Croatians, Italians and of course the good old US of A. For us the aim of the game here was just to be the best of the rest.

We set off on our run. The previous day Jamie had followed us down carefully coaching our edges which we put into good practice. The course seemed to flow well and we had a rather successful ‘sucking off’ section before dropping into the sprint course and screaming across the finish line.

We crossed the line into 3rd place just behind the other 2 British boats, but inevitably we wouldn’t hold those positions. As the other boats finished, we were steadily bumped down the standing, eventually finishing in 11th, 12th and 13th. Behind the French and Czechs, the Germans had slotted in, tailed by a Spanish and a Swiss crew. It was a reasonable result for three new crews, but excitingly as we counted back up the results list it put us as the 3rd fastest team. Could we scrape a medal in tomorrow’s team race? If we could it would be the first time any of us had stood on a podium. Theoretically the next fastest crew was the Spanish and we had 20 seconds on their slowest boat. It almost seemed too good to be true and yet it was so tantalizingly close.

Of course, the girls had already shown us up, with Kerry and Emma taking the gold in the WC2 race.

Team racing is hard. The first boat across the start line sets the clock ticking and the last boat across the finish stops it. The aim is to use each others washes to help pull everyone along, but anyone who’s tried to wash hang in a river racer will tell you that it’s no easy feat. Trying to do it on the rough is even harder. Trying to wash hang on the rough in a C2 is near impossible.

We left the accommodation early the next day to get in a sneaky practice run for the team race, although we quickly discovered we weren’t the only ones with that idea. We tried a few different combinations for the order and played around with the start a bit finally concludeding that we’d send me and Freddy down first followed by Andrew and Phil with Rob and Jacob taking up the rear. “1%” said Phil, “that’s all you and Freddie need to beat the fastest Spanish crew. 1% faster and we could do it”.

“12 down!” that was the split we got from Nicky at the half way bridge. We’d already been racing hard and it was not the split we wanted to hear. Freddie and I were trying are damnedest to find our 1% and yet we were already 12 seconds down on the fastest boat ahead of us. Freddie and I grit our teeth and tried to dig a little deeper. The other two crews trying to hold on.

With muscles screaming we crossed the finish line. “Segundo para Gran Bretaña”. My Spanish isn’t great but it’s good enough to translate that. 2nd. Not good enough. The French and the Czechs were still on the course and they would inevitably slip into 1st and 2nd bumping us down into 4th and off the podium. Had it been too much to dream that a team of fairly inexperienced C2s could steal a medal at the world champs? Probably.

But upon inspecting the results we realised we couldn’t be too disappointed. We had beaten the Spanish (our main rivals) and we had improved upon mine and Freddie’s time from the previous day. But it was the Germans who snuck into 3rd place. A couple of their boats hadn’t raced the classic yesterday and so they hadn’t factored into our team race calculations. They beat us by a healthy margin too, about 30 seconds. There was  experience in their boats and it showed.

Any sorrow was short lived and we patted ourselves on the back, a good result and a job well done. Onto the celebrations Billy Blackman and Jamie had collected Bronze in the over 35 C2 and Billy had won the Over 55 race, to claim his first gold! – Proving there was still hope for us yet. Tina and Mags also bagged some more bling in the senior ladies while Laura, Chloe and Kerry picked up a surprise Bronze in the WC1 team and Kerry collected her Silver from the other day as we baked in the Spanish sun through the prize giving.

We celebrated over dinner. “This is already the most successful world championships I can remember” said Jamie, “and we’ve still got the sprints to go!”.  Kerry thanked  everyone to a thunderous amount of applause. “These medals, and these results are a team effort. They’re thanks to all pushing each other on all the training camps and early mornings”.

“Ignore the medals, ignore the positions. If you look at the times everyone is closer to the winners than the last time we were here. We are all on a good trajectory” said Nicky. “Success breeds success”.

Success does breed success. But I’d argue the thing that grows and sustains success is a positive and supportive culture. Building this culture within the team might be Nicky and Jamie’s greatest achievement. The day before racing Nicky set a challenge to the team: everyone had to write down an anonymous compliment  for everyone else on the team. These were compiled into envelopes and distributed out to everyone. It was a joy reading of my classic ‘prowess’ vs Freddie’s power on the sprint. These messages went a long way for the less confident members of the team and gave everyone a boost before racing.

The sprints didn’t bless us with the gentle start of the previous days. Instead the whole team was up early to sneak in an extra couple of practice runs. Freddie was feeling pretty broken from two days of classic racing so we kept it short and sweet, confident that if we could replicate our lines in the race we’d nab a pretty reasonable time. So we set up camp to cheer on the team and rest up for our race.

As soon as the buzzer went Freddie found an extra gear, leaving me struggling to keep up with the rate. Not looking entirely dissimilar to an epileptic spider we crashed through the first few drops but then in the waves we lost an edge. We managed to prevent the boat from swinging wildly off line but we bled a lot of speed and crossed the line eager to improve.

For the second run I felt more prepared. I now knew Freddie would find a feverish stroke rate and was prepared to match it. We came down the first couple of drops nice and smooth and kept everything together through the waves and swirls. It felt near perfect – at least up until the last bend. We must have gotten the angle ever so slightly wrong down the penultimate drop as we found ourselves careening into the wall. We’d flirted dangerously close a couple of times, but this time we smashed into it at full speed. Freddie doubled over on the impact while I ripped out the straps holding me in place, flying forwards and nearly joining Freddie in the front of the boat!

Obviously this wasn’t the result we were hoping for, it was a disappointing end to our debut in C2, but there was still hope, could we redeem ourselves in the C2 team sprint the following day?

We sat on the start line. We’d had a few good practice runs as a team, but executing the plan in the race is always a challenge. After the disappointment of the team classic I don’t think anyone dared dream too big, but then from the top of the course we could here the commentator:  “Primero para  España”! At that moment my heart skipped a beat. We knew we could beat the Spanish, and after us was only the Czechs and the French. Could we do it could we steal a medal. “No, focus” I thought, “just do the job at hand”.

As soon as the buzzer went it was a blur. We peeled out of the eddy in close formation. Nose to tail we made it through the first drop, then the second. Still together. Shoulders screamed as we tore through the wave train then at the last crux it seemed like we would almost loose it, but we held on. We crossed the line in close succession, Andrew and Phil cutting a heroic line across the finish and into the eddy.

“Primero para Gran Bretaña”. There was a moment of stunned silence as we glanced at each other. We’d done it. A guaranteed 3rd place, our first international medals. The Czechs and French crossed the line into 2nd and 1st, but we were already celebrating. Water was thrown into the air as we were joined in the water hugging and cheering.

What followed was a blur of congratulations, celebrations and at least a couple of beers. It was a struggle fitting everyone onto the podium to but we just about managed it. The celebrations continued on the bus ride back to the accommodation (featuring a rousing rendition of the kings of Leon song – ‘This C2 is on fire’) and well into the night upon our return. 

We’d just about recovered by the time we disembarked the ferry back to the UK. 

“Anything to declare?”

“Just all these medals!”

It’s now been a short while since we got back, and honestly it’s taken a while to process everything and come down off Cloud 9. As always there was so much I had to leave out, Huw’s 18th, Jacob leaving his paddles on the wrong bus, Lucy’s broken thigh bars, teaching the Estonians to paddle C2 and so much more. These write ups are done so heavily from my point of view but it is incredible to see the progress the whole team has made.

On the ferry home I overheard Jamie chatting to Ciara & Elise, our upcoming Junior C2 boat. He asked them “How good do you want to be?”. Success begets success because it allows you to believe that success is possible. It would seem it is dream work that makes the team work.