Words from Nicky Cresser:
Sunday 25th November saw the British Classic Championship and Welsh Open Championship races that were scheduled to take place on the river Dee. After the torrential rain on Saturday, the river remained extremely high and after dropping a little was on the way back up.
An early call was made by the organising committee to close the river to racers and announced a change of course from the river dee to the Llangollen canal. This was not a popular choice amongst the athletes, but the correct choice as the egress point was treacherous, the river was close to bursting its banks with fast water, few eddies and lots of debris. There was also little option for safety cover.
Despite the change of course, the athletes put on a real show as they pushed hard to take the British and Welsh titles. The K1Ws racing was incredibly tight with Kerry Christie edging out Lucy Guest by just 6 seconds in a time of 12:28.06, with Hannah Brown in third place. The first Junior, Freya Pryce, crossed the line in 7th place overall in a time of 14:42.63.
In the women’s canoe classes, Molly Sandercock chose to skip the kayak class to focus on this class and her strategy worked with a dominant performance, winning by quite a margin over Alexandra Plachtova (CZE), with Freya Pryce in 3rd place and 1st junior.
In C2, the Nottingham junior crew of Elsie Landsborough and Ciara Maloney are closing the gap on Senior and World Champions Emma and Kerry Christie finishing in a very credible second place. Kerry and Emma still have quite the margin, taking the titles, but their training partners are looking to challenge them in the future. 3rd place was taken by the international crew of Alexandra Plachtova and Viktoria Scholzova.
In men’s kayak, Under 23 world champion Jan Sindelar was taken to the line by Nick Boreham who missed out by just over a second. Nick will certainly use this as fuel for his winter training for next year’s national and international season. 3rd place was taken by Will Stevely and as he comes into his last year as a junior, is starting to make a name for himself amongst the senior guys. He is one to watch in 2025.
The C1m class was lead by the international athletes with junior Czech athlete Tobias Trnka taking the win over France’s Louis Passernig. The first British athlete was veteran athlete, Nicky Cresser finishing in third place.
The first junior was Oliver Stegeman with a very credible 4th place. In C2, Robert Jefferies and Jacob Holmes will be pleased to finish their season on a high taking the victory ahead of Czech canoe specialists Filip Stratil and Tobias Trnka in 2nd with Michael Stegeman and Regan Toop taking 3rd.
The first Junior crew was Sam and Will Stevely who have recently started to race in this category on the back of their team mates’ international successes this year.
The mixed C2 was won by Phil Dean and Victoria Murray ahead of Nick Boreham and Laura Milne.
The WWR paddlers were again joined by the rafters. Not put off by the pan flat canal, they too put on a great show with the victors, “R.E.D” taking the win over “Muddy Mallards” by less than 10 seconds with 3rd place “Mine the age gap!” less than 20 behind them.
The British Classic Championships is one of the final races of the domestic season and with only the Harefield race this coming Saturday (30th November) and the Barrow race on 7th December, the final end of season rankings are within sight and most of the top spots have been secured.
For further information visit: www.wildwater.org.uk