Interclubs 2011
Last Updated on Friday, 16 September 2011 21:32 Written by Dave Bradshaw Friday, 16 September 2011 19:38
National Interclub Slalom Championships 2011
Always the weekend after the September Marple slalom is the National Interclub Slalom Championships at the artificial slalom course at Cardington, near Bedford.
Now, normally when you see the words "artificial slalom course" you picture the courses at Beijing or Athens, or even the new Olympic course at Lee Valley. If you've been around a bit you might think of Holme Pierrepont in Nottingham, or the course at Teeside, or even the first purpose built course at Augsburg in Germany, used for the 1972 Munich Olympics.
Well, forget all about that right away.
The course consists of a concrete channel that was built to provide a shortcut across a bend in the Great Ouse to avoid a lock on this navigable river when there was a danger of flooding. The local canoe club, Bedford CC pursuaded the authorities to make some additions to allow obstacles to be fitted to the channel. Orginally these consisted of boards placed across the channel, but that led to massively swirly eddies and led to many destroyed boats. The boards have now been mostly replaced by fibreglass boulders affectionally referred to as Hippos, and drainage pipes fixed to the bottom of the channel to make small pour-overs. The water is mostly too shallow, the eddies are either poorly defined or horribly swirly, and there isn't enough water flow to prevent grinding over the drainage pipes. Altogether the course is rubbish.
But that isn't the point of the event. It is the one race in the year when you are racing for your club rather than yourself. The team consists of 12 boats across all classes and divisions, and the performance of the division 3 girl is as important as the performance of the Premier man. Consequently all the runs are followed by the rest of the club cheering from the bank. Also they have a beer tent, with a disco on the Saturday night, which is always a bonus.
This year we had the strongest team ever for this event. We have always done OK at the Interclubs as we have always had reasonable strength in depth, but this year we had a strong team right from top to bottom. Unfortunately Mike Roberts was forced to drop out, but fortunately we had a reasonable replacement in Dan Cooke to take his place. The main rivals were Stafford and Stone, who normally field two teams, and are such a strong slalom club that they quite often get 1st and 2nd place.
As usual, we turned up just as it was going dark, and I ended up camping next to all the youngsters in the club, who had chosen to camp next to Holme Pierrepont CC for some reason, though I get the feeling that Alastair Paterson might have had some say in this. It was an early start Saturday morning for some as the practice runs got under way. Half way through the practice runs they decided that one of the drainage pipes was causing damage to the boats, so they switched off the water to reconfigure the course. Not something you usually expect.
The race got under way with the division 1 men's event where we had one of our strongest chances, with Tom Raper who has recently been promoted to the Premier division. Unfortunately he got a 50 on one of the upstream gates so we weren't off to a good start. Elliot Davidson also had a poor run in the Premier (B) class, though Dan Cooke did as well as expected in the Premier (A) class. Tom and Elliott both improved on their second runs, though Tom will still be dissapointed in his 11th place. Elliott Davidson should be satisfied with his 5th though he says he could have been 3 seconds faster.
Fortunately we were much stronger in the lower divisions who were racing in their team races on Saturday. The 2/3/Vet team came 6th, being awarded far more penalties than they should have on their first run. The ladies team and the canadian team both came second, so by the end of the day we were lying in fourth place, and there was little between us and second. Stafford and Stone A tean were first with a convincing lead, Stafford and Stone B team were second, and we weren't far behind them with Tees squeezing between us.
Saturday night was lubricated with some pints of Wells Bombardier, while the youngsters hung around the campsite until the early hours of the morning.
Sunday was very exciting. We knew we had a good chance with very strong competitors in some of the classes, and no really weak areas at all. Stafford and Stone (B) soon slipped down the leaderboard due to having a couple of very weak paddlers in the lower divisions. Tees were holding up strong though, as were Bradford and Bingley and Kingston KC. All our paddlers performed up to their expected levels, with Kay Bradshaw scoring a 2nd in the division 2 K1W, and Hesford and Carlisle in the C2 getting a fourth despite their lack of training this year. With five classes remaining to the end of the event it was looking rather tight, Tees were ahead of us but we knew that they were weak in the women's C1 and the veteran class. This allowed us a slender advantage going into the Prem/Div 1 ladies class. We also knew we had a strong contender in Amy Hollick, but Tees had a ringer that they had drafted in from over the border in Scotland in Alice Haining. Alice was faster than Amy on the first run getting 2nd place, while Amy had hit a gate which put her 4th, losing us 2 points to Tees. Amy pulled out all the stops on her second run, going faster and clear to take 2nd place ahead of Alice.
We were now 6 points ahead of Tees, but we knew they had a strong Prem/Div 1 men's team for the final event. Before this was the C2 class. Tees had a good C2, not the most experienced but it was crewed by two strong Premier kayak paddlers in Nicky Cressar and Sam Critchley, so Tom Carlisle and Steve Hesford were up against it.Tom and Steve had a dissapointing first run, slow and with 4 seconds of penalties which put them two places behind Tees. We knew a 4 point gap to Tees was probably not going to be enough, so the pressure was on Tom and Steve for the second run. They knocked 3 seconds off their time and went clear to beat the Tees crew by one place. We now had a 7 point advantage going into the Prem/Div 1 men's team race. After the first run our team were in 9th place after hitting 5 gates to collect 10 seconds of penalties, giving Tees a small window of opportunity to take enough points off us for second place overall, though they had also hit 5 gates on their first run. On their second run Tees improved significantly into 3rd place. We had to improve on our first run, if we dropped one place we would be sharing 2nd with Tees, if we dropped two places we would be third. The boys got it together for the second run, improving their time and only collecting 4 seconds of penalties to put them in 8th place. We were second overall, our best result ever in this competition.
We were still nearly 30 points behind Stafford and Stone (A), but this is real progress. All our paddlers were home grown, which is more than can be said for some of the other clubs. We need still to get stronger at the top end of the men's class, Stafford and Stone were able to field four paddlers currently ranked in the top 10 in the Premier division across their two teams, and our paddlers have some work to do to reach that level. We have now got a Premier K1W who is racing at that level now in Amy Hollick. So as long as our best paddlers continue to push upwards, and we continue to bring in new talent at the bottom end, we should be in a position to challenge S&SCC in the coming years.
For the full results see here Interclubs 2011 Results
