The blurb on the right hand side of this page says no promotions. I’m going to ignore that because Connor Lambert and Joseph Whittle finally got that div 7 promotion which they wanted.
Well done lads!!
[edit: Ellie & Deb also got promoted at Fladbury but we were overlooked because we raced div 7 rather than 8. Its now been corrected.]
Teams who routinely qualify for the hasler championships tend to get a bit complacent about the whole thing. Not us. But we’ve never qualified before.
It was a great day out - lots of boats (very easy to lose your car in a field at an event of that scale when you’re used to looking for the one with v-bars on it), lots of people, race starts for each division bigger than the combined race entry for whole midland haslers, lots of swimming, some excellent portaging, some dire portaging - including taking out two paddlers on the water by hitting one around the face, turning round to see what solid object your boat hit and in doing so, wrapping it around the back of someone else’s head, one crew getting out the wrong side of their boat, lots of swimmers, one boat being emptied over the heads of a K2 team who were trying to get out…
As a club we came twelfth out of 32. Given that most of our paddlers are concentrated in the lower divisions and we’re only a small club, I think that’s pretty bloody amazing.
Once again the seniors were shown up by the lightnings who came second in the country, beating Leighton Buzzard (their aim) but being beaten by Nottingham by 8 points. Bad luck guys but an excellent effort. The lightnings accounted for both of our podium placings - with Florence 3rd in U12 girls and Rose 2nd in U10s.
Everybody worked hard and did well but special mentions are deserved by the following:
Last year’s race at Fladbury is remembered mainly for the Lambo-jelly car key incident. We forgot that it is actually quite a hard race. It startts downstream which means you paddle upstream when you’re half-way tired. Still, we did OK with Cam and Tim looking good in the lightnings, Rose winning U10 girls by a substantial margin despite being stonewalled by a flock of swans about 20 yards into the race.
Matt did well in his first K1 race coming 3rd but just avoiding promotion which is what he wanted in his first solo outing and Will was looking tidy to come in mid-field.
Kate & Dave were once again just beaten into second place by Jenny and Tom who, if they didn’t get promoted on that performance split up and race K1 for a while - leaving the gold spot free for the sub-mariners should they choose to avail themselves of it. They were just 6 seconds ahead of Fladbury’s Sam Ingles and Josh Critchley one of whom managed to swim out of their OC2 just infront of the rowing club and after a quick swim, a run along the back they ppicked up the speed and came fourth. Brilliant effort guys! (How anybody can stay upright in an OC is still beyond me but that one can fall out and one can stay in really impressed me).
The Mopheads christened their new boat on the river and came a commendable fouth, beaten out of priszes by 1 second. Bad luck guys but it was god to get the boat out on the river in advance of the finals next weekend.
Ellie & I made a tactical error; two actually and they were probably both my fault. The first one was saying to Dave “Don’t worry about tightening up the footrest, its fine as it is and if you tighten it with a spanner I’ll never get it off again” and the second was saying to Ellie “Shall we race in div 7 and see how we get on?” The downstream bit of the race was OK although we were struggling to stay with the div 6 & 7 paddlers. The way back was harder; it was upstream, the front footrest came off jamming the rudder we lost all directional control and Ellie lost most of her power trying to kick against nothing. We didn’t come last though (and were only 20 seconds behind the folk who won div 8 and they didn’t have a broken boat) . And we will race div 7 again, but not for a while!!!
All in all no car keys were lost, no vehicles broken into, prizes won and we all had a good day out.
And we found a nice man who is going to make us some green and white spray decks; he leant me a couple and I promised to return them next weekend. He nearly managed to keep the surprise out of his voice when he asked if we were going to Burton!!!
Are we going to the finals? Oh yeah! Bring it on.
Ellie went. She paddled. Quite fast. She won her heat and went on to 9th in Final 2 putting her 18th out of 59 in Girls D. Not a bad start!!!
She didn’t get round to writing this up so if you want more info, you’ll have to ask her.
The Blackman girls racing in black and green also did well with Rose winning the K2 and K4 500m events. Grace coming second in both the 500m and 100m K2 events.
Well done girls!!
Is anyone who went to the nationals going to write anything for it or shall Andy and I make up some guff about hideous river conditions, a well deserved swim for the enemy, much hard work by everyone in SHP, a campsite full of drunks, Conor being chatted up by a bloke … oh and
KATE AND DAVE GETTING BRONZE IN THE NATIONAL DIV 9 RACE
Go submariners. You’ll be in div 8 next!
What a fantastic result at Adlington!! Eight paddlers went out of region to race at Adlington in Lancashire last weekend and all came back placed.
Phil and Maria won their K1 races and all three K2s, GAri & Anita in Div 7, Alice & Ellie in Div 8 and Emily & Josie in Div 9 all came second.
I don’t think there has ever been a race where EVERYONE from Shropshire got placed. Well done guys!