PURE JEST FOR LIFE: 1st Munich International Kayak-Freestyle Championchips

The day after the canoe trade show in Nuernberg the first int. Munich kayak-freestyle championships were held in Munich at the Flosslaende, a small artificial canal in Munich which has two small holes for just two weeks every year when there is a slalom competition as well.
The organizers were expecting around 30 participants for the premiere and were quite surprised when over 50 competitors showed up. As many things were improvised (no PC was used, just a original calculator) the awesome atmosphere was guaranteed by the many volunteers who helped the organizers (Maria being injured and not able to paddle had her first job at a comp as a scribe and liked it). All in all it was a spirit like in old times when the comps were still called Rodeo. I.e. food and drinks were spread under the participants and a fun-race was held for everyone, in which the prizes (Paddles, Kober Paddle-bags, Teva-Shoes etc.) were given to the paddlers, guaranteeing that not just the sponsored paddlers take something home. So I really hope the comp will be held again next year and they will preserve the perfect atmosphere of the event! The comp was held in a session format (2 minutes per paddler --> normally 10 min. heats with 5 paddlers) which was well perceived by all participants and spectators as pauses were held to a minimum.
In summary I was really happy to have made the final of the best 5 (final result K1 Men: 1. Seppi Strohmeier, 2. Martin Koll, 3. Val Grollemund, 4. Olli Grau, 5. Me). But my McNastys and Phoenix-Monkeys were just too inconsistent or rather the landing was too often not straight enough so I couldn´t compete with the points of Seppi or Martin. But well considering that I just had 3 hole-sessions this year I`m really content with my paddling and might reconsider my aspiration for the qualifications for the next worlds in Plattling ;-)
Below some pics and check out the official website of the event for the full results:
freestyle-muc.de

Going for the Fisherking entry move

Super Cleaning it

Here a nice Loop-Sequence:

Going deep for the Loop 1

Loop 2

Loop 3

Loop 4

Loop 5

Phoenix-Monkey Initiation

Phoenix-Monkey Second Step

Going for the Space Godzilla

Fun Race

One of the organizers Julian Mihé going for the loop

Julian Mihé doing his speaker job

The fun race started with a mass start on the shore and as I saw Olli Grau taking off wihtout closing his spraydeck I thought, shit I´ll have to do the same and hurry to get one of the limited plastic ducks which functioned as the ticket to the prizes. Well it worked out to the extent that I got one of the first ducks in a eddy downstream but after a few other racers torpedoed my boat it started to sink ;-)