Yip that wraps up another NZ Selection races and the New Zealand Open. The weekend was a pretty good one with a quite a few internationals coming over to race which is always great to see!! Congratulations to Mike Kurt who took the win today in front of Fabian Dorfler and John Hastings coming home in 3rd. I personally had a crap weekend of racing where I couldn’t get into rhythm of racing and made lots of really basic mistakes which cost me large amounts of time. I still made the final and had a shocker final run with a 50second penalty so I ended up 10th. Im not too worried though as its always hard juggling coaching and racing as an athlete. On the other hand I’m really happy for those athletes that I have been coaching as they all raced really well and most of them smashed their personal goals.

The NZ Teams for U18, U23 and Senior Teams will be announced in the next few days. For results from the weekend check out Canoe Slalom NZ.

Following the Kawerau race I headed straight home to Napier to check up with some friends and family. We are now back in Palmerston North preparing for the NZ Open and the final race for NZ team trials. There a still a few internationals here so it should be an exciting race.

There is also the Tour De Manawatu cycle tour going on around Palmerston North over the next few days so there is plenty of cyclists cruising around. Yesterday was the time trial which was around Massey University. I had a couple of things to do up at the Uni so popped up for a look and got a couple of photos… 

Steve Stannard smashing himself towards the finish line!

For the past few weeks I have been in traveling throughout Tasmania with the NZ Junior Development Team. This was my 5th tour as a coach of the team and about 10th tour to Australia for the Australian Nationals. We left on the 29th of December to embark on a 16 day tour to compete in Australian Open Nationals and the Australian Secondary Schools Championships. We arrived in Launcesten and drove a few hours inland to our accommodation at the Lake Barrington Rowing Centre. It is an awesome facility as we are all able to stay together and have a massive lake, pretty much to ourselves right at our doorstep. Therefore we made the most of it with lots of flatwater training, swimming and some running around the Australian bush.

The area is well known for its Poppy fields, old towns, cradle mountain and heaps of lakes and rivers!  This all makes for great scenery with plenty of detours to check out various tourist attractions such as the massive Devils Dam, which helps create Lake Barrington. We also checked out the local wild life park where we were lucky enough to pat wombats, tasmanian devils and kangaroos! Also on our rest day the team had a look through the Maraloopa Caves. These caves were pretty cool with some sweet stellic tights, mights, a few columns and a bunch of glow worms!

Racing soon approached us and our first stop was the Mearsy River for the Australian National Championships. A cold front came through on race day and but the only concern for the kiwi team was the threat of leaches… Racing went well, Day 1 of racing saw the K1 Men and C1 Woman on the start line. The boys raced well for themselves and all have made really good progress since the start of the tour! I also made the start line and the longer course made it a bit of a long slog. I ended up finishing 2nd behind 2005 World Champion Fabian Dorfler from Germany. Will Forsythe finished 3rd overall and took out the title for top Australian. Day 2 saw the C2, K1 Woman and the C1 Men race. Our girls and C1s also raced well and all made improvement throughout the race. For NZ Team results check out slalomnz.org.nz. Day 3 was the last day of racing at the Australian Open Nationals. There was just teams races and a bit of an Australian BBQ for the team to mingle with all of the other athletes.

Following the Australian Nationals the team made its way to the Forth river for the Australian Secondary Schools Championships. The course is a relatively flat course but is still challenging enough to present some problems for the less experienced paddles.  There is a large flat section at the top of the river that is a bit of a lung buster and then it narrows up a little bit wit a cool little wave and some really good eddies. The team once again raced really well and there were plenty of medals taken home by the NZ Team. Again for results click here.

Our final days are spent pretty much at airports to get our boats back to NZ, this means a lot of waiting and finding ways to kill some time…The tour was yet another success with all of our paddlers progressing throughout the tour and everyone enjoying the trip!! Im sure this group of paddlers will reach higher honours.  Thanks a lot to our manager Kellie Bailey, also to Pip Arnold and our coaches Ian Mercer and Roy Bailey.

I WILL POST ALL MY PHOTOS OF EVERYONE ON MY FACEBOOK PAGE. CLICK HERE

Photo is from a very small surf at the beach in Napier…

The Kawerau Training camp was held last week and was aimed at developing our younger athletes and also developing some of our coaches. The weather looked like it was going to present some issues but luckily its always sunny in Kawerau… The kids stayed warm and had a great time and learnt a lot from our coaches. Thanks to Ollie for her hard work organizing the camp! Follow this link for a few more Photos of the Kawerau Camp!

Unfortunately the wild weather hit the Bay of Plenty pretty hard so there was too much water to hold a race at the Wairoa river. However we had a great night at Ellas 21st and then had to drive home to Napier early Sunday morning.

There is a couple more events going on this week with a couple of Junior Development training camps held in Kaweru and Tekapo. The Bill Ross Memorial race is on Sunday at the Wairoa. For more information check out SlalomNZ.

Also for those hanging around Palmerston North there is the Oceania Canoe Polo Championships is on so head down to the Lagoon and check it out!!!

Photos courtesy of Contour…

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