Junior Women Rip it up in prelims!

January 27, 2005

There were two heats of junior women in the prelims
this year. Would you believe that two of them scored so high that they
would have both been in the top 5 in the senior women’s class! There were
both exciting rides to watch, as well as very depressing rides. I love
it when athletes perform at or near their potential, but it doesn’t always
happen. In the first heat, Hannah Farrar, who is an incredible kayaker,
and competing in her second world championships, failed to put a ride
together that came close to her practice rides, scoring below the cuttoff
for finals. Also in that heat was Jak Alder who threw a bunch of ends,
a clean cartwheel, and threw an air loop at the end, scoring 70+ points
on one ride! Katie Kowalski from Canada also had two nice rides with vertical
ends, but fell just short of the cutoff (Top 5 junior ladies go to the
finals).

In the second heat I got to watch my daughter compete,
and what a treat! She pulled into the eddy and then proceeded to get the
crowd going big for her before her first ride. Staying in for 35 seconds,
while throwing a blunt, cartwheels, and cleans, she scored 36 points and
had already qualified for finals with only her first ride. (of course
she didn’t know it at the time). On her second ride she almost tied her
first score exactly putting her comfortably in second place behind Jak,
but with two solid rides, and she didn’t have an incredible ride for herself,
so I think there is still room for improvement as well.

There were great rides from most of the junior ladies.
It was very impressive to me to find out that Emily and Jak were both
top 5 in the women’s class as well as one and two in the junior ladies.

🙂 EJ

For more coverage see www.bliss-stick.com,
www.playak.com,
www.doubleuess.com
as well as Canadian coverage by www.ottawakayak.com