Slalom? What’s that?
3-2-1-GO! Dig hard. Accelerate the ultra-light boat through the
timing beam. The flow’s pushing right so aim for
the left pole of Gate1. Though it – sweet! J Next a drop with a red upstream gate behind that rock on the left. Hard
sweepstroke, angle the boat as we drop down, reeeeeach over the eddy line, dig in a left bow
rudder, puuush the right foot, the boat spins just beyond the gate. Overshot a bit – lost a
couple of seconds there! Couple of hard pulls, up through the gate, keep pointing up, edge,
edge. Now to cross that roaring wave. A lottery for me! Point up high. Punch through the eddy
line, hit the wave, a quick hard sweep keeps the nose up, whooooosh, splash! Love
that! Where are we?? Oh lucky! J Right by the next gate – but stalled L. Bouyancy hits the gate as I try to squirm my head through. 2 second penalty! L. Could have been worse, if I’d been swept
out of that cross I would never have got back, it’s a 50 second penalty for missing a
gate! …….
Sounds great!. But who are
“Blades”?
We are Tandridge’s slalom
racing squad. We welcome paddlers enthusiastic enough to train hard, play hard and and race with us. Tthe
earlier you start the further you’ll go! We have racing boats. We usually train twice a week. Basic
skills and paddlesport specific fitness at a local lake. Whitewater skills on the weir at Shepperton.
We get huge encouragement from Shepperton SCC, one of the UKs leading slalom racing clubs.
Keen competitors who reach Div 2 join the their “Pure”
training group. We run an annual training camp on an international
grade course in the French
Alps. For a bit of light entertainment and gentle relaxation we go on trips to the Dart etc.
One word of warning to
parents. Our slalom trainees get intensely active support. We do encourage (= Frogmarch) parents to give the
sport a go, get boating themselves. Why should they miss out on the fun having driven to the
event. Besides, some of them get rather good….
18 gates later, S’s,
staggers, break-outs. Shoulders burning, lungs bursting now, sprint for the
finish line, Phew! Not too bad. Now what went wrong? A bit more practice around that
first breakout and that tight stagger sequence in the middle methinks. I’ll get a second crack at it. Maybe faster
next time!
That’s slalom. Fast,
exhilarating, exhausting. Tantalising and -just occasionally- hugely
rewarding. A safe sport, easy to start in – flat water courses, just turn up and use any boat
you like. Give it a go! Then progress through the divisions. 4, 3, 2, 1. Big big water by this stage but you’ve worked up
through the ranks so you know you can handle it. Then when you’re really skilful, fit and committed, join the big boys
in Premier. Aim to represent your country. Slalom is the only whitewater sport
in the
Olympics, we had medal winners at Sydney and Athens J J
Slalom
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