Wildalpen Freestyle 2013

Next step was the second run of the Austrian Freestyle Championship at Wildalpen at the beginning oh July - I came there as second and definately wanted to keep my silver medal. :)

As this is my homespot I really know that plasypot well - which definately helps! And additionally people said, it would be very similiar to the Worldchampionship-Playspot at the Nantahala Outdoor Center.

Unfortunately are there no pictures of the event, because I managed to get into the Semifinals!

So I managed to keep my 2nd place and thus qualified for the Kayak Freestyle Worldchampionship in North Carolina! 

So now the preparation for the Worlds really started (Hadn´t even been thinking about the worlds a few months earlier - so this was a huge surprise for me)!

Next stop wuold be Prague!

Some random Wildalpen pictures:

Dolomitenrodeo Lienz

On June 8th the Dolomiten-Rodeo took place in Lienz. After some really heavy rainfall 2 weeks earlier it almost looked like there was not going to be an event: the playspot "Drauwalze" had changed quite a bit.

But Thomas Zimmermann and the organisationsteam decided to make the event (this was really important for the Austrian Kayak Freestyle Championship, because Graz had already been cancelled due to a destroyed Radetzky-Wave).

Only few paddlers found their way there, though quite well known ones:  Ruling World Champion James "Pringle" Bebbington, twice Vice-Worldchampion Peter Csonka, many times Austrian Champion Marcel Bloder and few other international kaykaers.

Here are a few impressions (all pictures taken by Jakob Stadlbauer on my camera - thank you very much Jakob!):

Paddlers: Katya Kulkova, Lucie Horka, Nina Csonkova, James Bebbington, Marcel Bloder, Matt Cooke, Martin Koll, Jan Spindler and myself.

More pictures

This was the first Competition where I managed to get onto the finals! It was quite amazing for me. Made the 6th place overall and came second in this first run of the Austrian Kayak Freestyle Championship behind Marcel Bloder. The overall winner was James Bebbington before Martin Koll and Matt Cooke.

The afterparty was great - as always in Lienz!

Uganda march 2013

It all began in March 2013 when I went to Uganda!

Those 3 weeks of kayaking and tons of new experiences really kicked off my kayaking skills!

Here are a few impressions from Uganda:

For more pictures check this out!

Paddlers: Aapo, Tomasz,Teemu and Juuso.