The weekend just past brought about the second Colligan Gorge Games which had a huge number of Irish paddlers travel to the unlikely white water Mecca that is Co. Waterford. This year had the one thing that last years event was missing which was near perfect water levels.
The event had both team and individual categories which were divided into sport & expert classes. The racing was tight among everyone and it was shown that even the slightest nudge from your competitors could send you to the back of the pack in an instant. It was a long day with the racing getting off from not long after 9am and continuing right through until almost dark, it was a testament to all those that travelled that the crowds never stopped cheering not once all day long.
The finial “Salmon Leap” rapid was the location for some very interesting lines and some carnage from both the expert and sport classes and the dash to the finish line was littered with abandoned boats & bruised egos.
So the long weekend just past was scheduled for the first “Free you Style” event to take place in Kilkenny, sadly a couple of days before the event was to happen the recent very heavy rain fall had washed the weir out and there wasn’t much of a feature left.
As the aim of the free your style day was to encourage and foster an interest for participation freestyle events I had little choice to postpone the event until a further date in the near future.
In contacting the coaches who had volunteered there services for the day they were all really keen to still take part in the event at a later date. I was aware that lots of the people who all set to travel to Kilkenny for the day were still keen to do something regardless of the level so I said that I would run a river trip on the Sunday for the first few who got back to me and would decide what section of the river to use upon seeing the water level on the day.
Sunday morning brought us sunshine and highish but workable levels, we ran a mini rive trip from the Bleach road get on to the weir. We all had a wee chat at the get on and set out what we all wanted to work for the day and set off in good form with every one set to pick up some new skills and brush up on the ones we already had.
As some of you know this idea was only really conceived in the Sluice car park last Sunday afternoon after a training day organised by Ger O’Reily and to be honest I am surprised how quickly this has snowballed. The premise for this event and the ones that are planned to follow it is pretty simple “To run a series of freestyle events with will allow people to learn new skills & develop their existing ones in a fun and safe environment”.
This is a freestyle coaching day which will have some top quality coaches and freestyle paddlers on hand to help you up your freestyle skills.
This is happening on the 25th Oct 2009
The day will be in two parts. The first part will be a series of skills work shops and the second will be a mini freestyle competition.
The event will take place at the new weir at Greensbridge Kilkenny which is one of the best features in the country for learning the foundations of freestyle kayaking.
A few days back on of the guys from the UKRGB Bren (aka Peakfreak) posted up that there are no videos online that just explain the “double pump” and any that try assume too much previous knowledge from the person looking to learn.
I had being thinking of doing up a few wee how to tutorials but was being a bit lazy about it, I took this as a bit of motivation. I hit a part of the local river two cameras and tripod in hand. Sadly after I had uploaded the footage to my laptop I some lost it all , a fecking disaster so I flew back down to the river with my younger brother Keith “shaky hands” Shanahan and managed to get only 6mins of raw footage before the battery died. I managed to salvage this after all that.
This has kinda inspired me to put a bit of effort in and knock out a few more hoping to improve on the quality.
So I have broke the onlyish kinda rule I set my self when I started this blog thin up, “to keep it updated regularly”. The only positive is that I’ve had loads of stuff on as of late which included some boating & good times.
Clifden Fun Rodeo 09
So for the few weeks leading up to the weekend of 20th/21st of June myself , Bowsie & some of the NUIG/GMIT kayak club crew were busy making plans for Event 2 of the IFS league which was to be held in Clifden Co. Galway.
The idea of the event was was pretty straight forward, “lets get everyone over to Clifden do a training / freestyle event lash a BBQ & beach party in the middle of it all and hope every one has a savage time”. From the feed back we have gotten I say it’s safe to say we did what we set out to do.
As some of you might know I am a member of the Irish Freestyle Committee and that our National Team are in preparations for the upcoming World Freestyle Championships In Thun Switzerland later in the Summer. RTE’s magazine program Nationwide decided to do a a small piece on the Freestyle Team and Freestyle kayaking as a whole, this was a bit of honour for us as we are the only sport/ discipline to get covered twice.
As this was Filmed at relative short notice and that the team are currently spread from Uganda to the Ottawa I drafted in some help form friends / Sluice locals and those of the national team that were in striking distance of Dublin.
Fellow team i-canoe member James VdB took some shots on the day
The piece aired on Irish National last Friday evening to approx 500,000 + and was received well among both the paddling / non-paddling community. My only regrets are that there was not some more kayaking shown as a few of the guys managed to go huge on the evening but this wasn’t shown, there were also a couple of more interviews shot too which didn’t get aired ( one of which included the single best “why do you kayak” answers I have ever heard ).
Welcome to my little part of the interweb, I know what you are thinking " Ah jayus..........not another fecking blog", sure bear with me and see how it goes.
I will be updating it nice and regular with photos/ stories / random banter & little "how to" guides. Stay tuned it might help you waste some time during the working day.
