Shropshire Paddlesport Blog

Comiserations to Trentham Canoe Club whose Hasler race last weekend coincided with a severe weather warning of 75mph winds in the area. An early morning set of phone calls resulted in us deciding that discretion was the better part of valour and and that we weren’t going to go.

It would seem that we were not the only ones as the results show an unfortunately low number of entries and lots of consolidated classes.  Hard luck to all our friends at Trentham - as I said in my email to Phil, no-one expects blue skies and sunshine in November, but we’d like a reasonable chance of staying ON the lake Fingers crossed for better next year.

The BCU Marathon website is in an even worse state than usual at the moment (apparently they’re rebuilding it again) but the Trentham results are here

We’ve just (slightly belatedly) had the confirmed set of promotions and demotions from the Hasler Finals in Reading last month. At this remove it’s probably not news any longer, but just to confirm:

Anita and Gari were promoted to Division 6

Connor and Joseph were promoted to Division 6

Dave and Kate were promoted to Division 8

Congratulations everyone.

SHP seems to have had an amazingly successful day yesterday .

At Lincoln, Ellie came second in div 7 and Dave came second in div 8 - his first ever K1 race, and his first div 8 race.  Fortunately he wasn’t promoted otherwise Kate might have ensured that it was his last race ever.  It looks like Dave is going for the club Hasler trophy again - somebody please stop him!!!

(Results page now updated to reflect Lincoln results)

Re friends in other clubs, Sarah Walters (Burton) came 5th in her first div 6 K1 race and was the fastest woman at the event and Tom Lusty (Solihull) came second in his frst div 6 k1 race and got promoted to div 5.  We remember the days when it was Tom’s ambition to beat Kate and Dave with his parter Jenny Barber.  Go Tom!!

At Stone Slalom the club was very successful although I only have partial results.  Hopefully somebody who was there - and actually understands this spinny boat stuff - will write this up more fully.  Hoewever, I do know that Joseph Whittle came 1st in the men’s K1 event and third with Will bevan in C2 juniors;  Matt Whittle came 2rd overall by 0.3 of a second, Marcus Whittle came first by 30 seconds in his race and Florence Whittle got first out of all the the div 4 women.

Well done all!

Can you believe it - we’re already two races into the season. A small but perfectly formed Shropshire Paddlesport team went off to Fladbury and had a completely storming day.

Dave & Kate took a comfortable win in Div 9 K2 and finally bowed to the inevitable and have been promoted to Div 8. Ellie’s K2 partner - Sarah Walters from Burton - was promoted to Div 6 at the Hasler Finals and so they were now both racing the 8 mile course. Unconfirmed rumour has it that Ellie was even seen to run a portage !

I’ve updated the results page to reflect Soar Valley and Fladbury - at this stage the leader board is completely up for grabs, but as a club we’ve got a lot to do if we’re going to make to the cut before the Hasler Finals in 2010 (and yes, before anyone else points it out I know I’ve not been in a boat for months !)

Well it was a beautiful sunny day in Reading with a lot of good racing on, as usual, a fairly lumpy bit of river. Mixed fortunes for the SHP collective but Anita and Gari upheld the honour of the club taking silver in their K2 race. A cracking Lightning run for Tim Bevan as well in his last L1 race seeing off a number of the usual competition.

Full results when they’re confirmed, but in the meantime a few pictures from the weekend

Gari & Anita collecting their silver

Matt powering off the start line

Dave & Kate in the bedlam of the Div 9 K2 start - it’s quieter up in Div 8, honest !

Tim looking determined…

Sam and cam looking knackered

Well, it doesn’t seem to have been the best race for SHP but sometimes things just don’t go your way.  With Ellie and the mopheads having to retire through illness, Matt running into trouble part way round and Cam & Marcus being bounced into the bank the youngsters didn’t have the best day out.

On the other hand Kate and Dave came 4th in a combined div 8/9 race beating a number of div 8 crews and the sun shone. That promotion has to be iminent.

Overall the club got 2 points.

The clubs going to the Hasler final are:

1st Nottingham 90 points

2nd Worcester 89 points

3rd Gailey 64 points

4th Anker Valley 63 points

5th Solihull 62 points

6th Shropshire Paddlesport 60 points

7th Lincoln 55 points

8th Burton 53 points

There are currently 14 people who hav qualified for the hasler finals.  These are the top 14 people in the points table and are listed below for clarification:

• Andy May - K1
• Ellie Barnes - K1 or K2
• Mathew Whittle - K1 or K2
• Dave Barnes - K2
• Will Bevan - K2
• Kate Jinks - K2
• Cameron Lambert - K2
• Connor Lambert - K2
• Deb May - K2
• Sam Rudd - K2
• Alice Russell - K2
• Phil Russell - K2
• Joseph Whittle - K2
• Marcus Whittle - K2

Plus as many lightnings as want to go.

I know Gari & Anita are planning on heading down to the nationals to get one final race in to qualify aswell which means there could potentially be 16 of us going to Reading.

Go Shropshire!!!!

Shropshire had a phenomenally successful days racing at ironbridge today with lots of people racing and lots of people winning.

In K1 racing Matt Whittle won his first ever div 7 K1 race taking the lead right from the start and maintaining it throughout the race.  Paul Crisp came second in the div 6 race (his second hasler race, and first div 6 race), overtaking at least one div 5 K2 on the way through and Sam Rudd came a commendable 5th in div 8 - again, only her second K1 race!

The K2s were equally successful with Connor and Joseph just pipping Anker Valley’s Liz Franklin and Jenny Sykes to first place by 4 seconds, closely followed by Marcus & Cameron who beat another K2 team into third place by just one second.  The finishs for these boats was so exciting I forgot to get any photos.  Sorry.

The div 9 race was consolidated with div 8  so Kate and Dave, despite their protestations that they like being in div 9 and shouldn’t be promoted because they’re not fast enough for div 8 managed to beat several div 8 crews to come second in the combined race which makes their chances of promotion reather more likely.

Also in the running for promotion are Anita and Gari who decided to enter the 8 mile div 6 race rather than do their normal div 7 course and again managed a second place.

Almost everyone came home with a pot and shed loads of club points.  Well done team.

Mick is sorting out the HRM so promotions etc should be known in the next week or so.  Hopefully (or maybe not) we’ll know before the nationals - Kate & Dave and Gari & Anita might be racing their first races in new divisions…

[Edit by Andy - a few photos from today]

Well it has been a glorious day in the sunshine at Bridgnorth with the weather giving us a perfect end to the Midlands regionHasler 2008/2009 series. This was Ironbridge 2 - as I explained in a previous posting they have now moved their race to the end of the season rather than the beginning. What this means is that (until the Marathon Committee change the rules again) all of our regional races fall in sequence with the closing dates for qualification for the 2009 Hasler Final in mid-September and the 2010 race season starting with Soar Valley on September 20th.

We’ll update you with the dates for 2010 season races as they become finalised (which should be over the next few weeks - at presnet the only ones we know about are:

Soar Valley - 20/9/09

Fladbury - 4/10/2009

Lincoln - 11/10/2009

Anyway, that is looking ahead to next season. Before that, of course, there is the little matter of the 2009 Hasler Finals on September 27th at Reading.

Finally (just to put the Barnes/Jinks “we’re only in this for the fun, we’re not competitive at all really” team out of their misery), I’ve updated the table with the final scores for the club’s own internal Hasler trophy. Despite a heroic end-of-season charge by Matt Whittle, Dave and Kate came away from Ironbridge not only with some nice pottery, but with the top spot by 22 clear points. The full list is here but as you can see we’ve had 36 people race for the club at least once this year with an impressive 132 race starts in total.

The Lightning entries have been down a bit on last year due to a significant number of our previous lightning team progressing up to Senior racing because of age (or in Cameron’s case due to being a complete K2 floozie). Florence gets top spot in the Lightning table although she was being chased hard by Tim Bevan. Hopefully we can start to involve our next generation of Lightning paddlers and build back up to our previous position of greatness.

Thank you everyone for your commitment to racing this season. Enjoy the Nationals and the Hasler finals, and let’s start it all over again at Soar Valley in about 6 weeks time.