The winners of the 2011 annual Australian Canoeing awards have been announced. The Australian womens canoe team (Jess Fox, Ros Lawrence, Ali Borrows and myself) took out the Sportscene sponsored award 'Team of the year'. Well done on a fantastic season girls!

The 2011 slalom season has ended with mixed results. Unfortunately after paddling well through the heats and leading the field into the semi finals, my run fell apart with 3 gates to go as I rolled down the ‘Niagara’ drop and failed to make the finals.

Fortunately the Aussie girls had a chance for redemption with the teams event underway a few hours later. With a solid run Jess Fox, Ros Lawrence and myself claimed gold in the first ever womens canoe team event at a World Championships.

World Cup Final

The final World Cup for 2011 in Prague, Czech Republic starts today in under 2 hours! The Australian Womens C1 have been using the course here in Prague as a base for training over the past 3 weeks. I have finally started paddling my new Galasport Tilt which is amazing to paddle, super nice to turn and really stable. Today we have the heats for all categories including 24 wC1 racing off for a place in the semi finals with the finals to be held on Saturday. All results including live footage and TV coverage can be found on the Troja website.

World Cup 3 - Leipzig, Germany

This weekend will be the final week of racing for a while with the 3rd World cup being held in Leipzig Germany. The weather has been fairly kind to us so far, however the heavy poles have not been! Typically Leipzig weather is VERY windy so paddling with the weighted poles here has been extra motivation to paddle cleanly! The course is much faster in comparison to the water in L'Argentiere last week so it has taken a few days to become familiar with it. All race information including results can be found at the event website here.

Via Ferrata, France

After finishing racing on Saturday Kynan, Jaxon and I went and saw some of the gorgeous sights around L'Argentiere! Definitely a good way to do it!

Australia 1 2 3 at World Cup 2

For the second time in the history of WC1 Australia has taken a clean sweep in this class at an international level. Jessica Fox came away with the win closely followed by Rosalyn Lawrence in 2nd and myself in 3rd. The top section of my run was fairly smooth however I ran into some difficulty at a tough cross bow move in gate 11 and had to roll wasting some valuable time.

World Cup 2 - L'Argentiere

The format for this weekends racing is slightly different to the previous World cups with heats and semis being run today. A long course has been set so I imagine many people will take the opportunity to rest during their 2nd heats run. Results can be seen live here.

World Cup 2 on Australian TV!

This weekends World Cup in France will be shown in Australia on Foxtel via Eurosport. They will show 90 minute live coverage at 18:30 Saturday 2 July with 60 minute highlights on Sunday July 3 at 3am and 90 minutes on Monday July 4 at 17:45 and again on Tuesday 5th at 7.30.

Silver at World Cup 1

The weekend didn't start exactly to plan for me with my heats and semis leaving a lot of room for improvement! My first heats run was solid however included a 50 and my semi final run included everything from looping the boat to rolling on rocks. Luckily it was enough to get me through to the final where I was determined to lay down at least one good run for the weekend. It was a very enjoyable clean and fast run... losing the majority of time in a spin move that should have been done direct. It was enough for silver only 0.31 sconds behind Roslyn Lawrence of Australia and a nice margin of 11 seconds ahead of third place Katarina Macova of Slovakia. Today Kate, Ros, Kynan and Robbie race in the finals before we head off to the Australian Institute of Sport Italian training base this afternoon.

Tacen training

Final preparations are being put in place for the first of 4 World Cup races in 2011. Despite flooding at the beginning of the week, the course is now back to fairly normal levels which hopefully will remain steady for this weekends racing. Heats begin tomorrow for all classes with the finals for MC1, WC1 and MK1 on Saturday. All results can be found at the Solka website and you can also watch live via the ICF streaming.

Europe 2011

"I'm going on a summer holiday..." ... well not quite. We arrived in Zurich today to 12 degrees and rain. Not quite the summer weather i had envisaged! The trip over here was relatively painless thanks to an authentic Thai massage in Bangkok and a half empty plane to Zurich! So after 5 countries in 30 hours and another to add tomorrow we will arrive in Slovenia for our final preparations for the first World Cup for 2011.

Team Guinea is back online for 2011

Team Guinea is back for 2011! Chris and Scott and working, coaching and studying hard back in Melbourne for the winter while Leanne jets off to Europe for a summer of racing. The most recent Penrith Valley Canoeing race was the final preparation for those paddlers left in Australia before the World Cup series. Here you can view some footage of Leanne on both the Saturday and Sunday courses.

Video for the World Championship

Video of run 1 qualification, semis and finals are now available for viewing at http://vod.sportstec.tv/

World Championship Wrap up

The World Championships started on Wednesday with the LK1 and C2 qualifications. Chris and Scotty had a solid first run which they unfortunately couldn't improve on during their second run and finished in 32nd place, very impressive considering their less than ideal lead up to the competition.

Qualifications started poorly for me later that afternoon with a 50 second penalty on both qualifying runs, however I managed to put down a time which still enabled me to progress through to the top 20 and compete in the semi finals on Sunday.

In the semi finals I had a solid run with two main time losses. I finished 3^rd with fellow Aussie Jess Fox in 6^th position for the final. I saved my best run of the season for the final and finished in 2^nd place just of 6 seconds behind Jana Dukatova of Slovakia. Jess claimed the bronze a further 2 seconds behind. It was great to see the class of ladies C1 growing significantly from last year even despite being on very challenging water. We had 28 competitors entered from 19 countries, which equals the number of nations entered for the men’s C2 class.

Results can be found here

Congratulations to Lucien (making finals!) the Aussie LK1 paddlers who claimed the trophy for best nation in this class (all 3 making the final which is AMAZING!!) – it is the first time the trophy has ever gone outside Europe!

SILVER AT WORLD CHAMPIONSHIPS!!!

..... more to come

Final Countdown

There is less than 48 hours until the World Championship commence! The course is finally starting to look more like a competition site rather than a construction zone with bridges and podiums popping up overnight. For all the information and results at the World Championships see the Solka website. Also, check out this video montage created by Yann Le Pennec of me paddling down the first drop here at Tacen (luckily all the good bits only!)

Silly Siblings

Injury has struck the Guinea boys during their first training session here at the course in Tacen, Slovenia, where the Worlds will be held in approximately 2 weeks time.... although this time in Scotties exact words.... 'At least this time we weren't being stupid!' On their first run down the 3m+ drop at Tacen the boys managed to catch an edge and roll on the VERY shallow ramp. Chris managed to literally grate his hand along the concrete on the bottom and has spent the past week keeping it dry and free from infection. To describe it better to you Ros stated 'it looks like his hand went through a mincer!' Thankfully the construction workers have been in and smoothed out the culprit concrete. Chris and Scotty are now back on the water with a week before qualifications wearing a beautiful pink dishwashing glove to keep his hand dry!

Check out this Video!

Check out this new video created by Twelve Productions 'This is who WE are'

Training in Tacen

The past month has been spent training in Ljubljana, the capital of Slovenia where the World Championships will be held in 4 weeks time. It has been wonderfully quiet on the water as the majority of European paddlers have spent their time preparing for the European Championships which will be held this weekend in Bratislava. Thanks to Richard Fox, Noami Fox and Fionna Pennie for the photos!

Relaxing in England

The team took a break from training and racing last week following the intense World Cup schedule and has now met back for a training camp in Bratislava, the site of next years World Championships and Olympic Qualification races. Myself and the Lawrence sisters headed across to England for the beautiful wedding of Heather Caeser and Ben Hankinson and I also managed to squeeze in some sightseeing around London and surrounds while I was there.