At the start of October CANI Slalom Squad members Elliott Davidson, Alistair McCreery and Kirsten Eatock made their way to Wales for the Double Premier Race in Tryweryn . With two separate ranking races on the 3rd and 4th October the competition was full with competitors from all across the UK pushing hard to gain points in one of the last Premier Races of the season.
The athlete’s arrived late on Friday to find perfect water levels, ideal weather conditions and a tough course design which set a precedence for a good weekends racing.
On Saturday in the K1 Women’s category Kirsten Eatock was paddling up from Division 1 and finished in 31st. With such a tough course being set this was a very positive result for her paddling a Division above her standard and showing her what it takes to be in Premier Division. In the K1 Men’s Category Alistair McCreery in his first Premier Race since being promoted finished in 45th place with a time of 111.39+2, Elliott Davidson also took to the water and finished in 31st place with a time of 104.38+4. These were too respectable finished but both were disappointed with the amount of penalties they picked up which kept them from a higher finish.
With a new course set for the race on Sunday, Kirsten went out to improve on her performance on the Saturday. With a much smoother second run she managed to secure a 35th place finish and improve on her Saturday performance. Unfortunately in the K1 Men’s Category both Alistair and Elliott struggled with the course and each picked up several penalties. After second runs Alistair finished in 46th place and Elliott in 37th place.
Premier Division is the top flight of competition within the UK. Many of the paddler’s racing are seasoned international paddler’s who represent GB or who have in the past. This experience and talent is shown in the results with the top paddler’s regularly being separated by less than a second. We at CANI are very excited that there are now several CANI athlete’s competing within this division and several more chasing promotion into it. With only a couple more races left in the season we look forward to hearing how CANI athlete’s get on at these.
