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By Jez

The opening ceremony was nothing short of spectacular. We arrived with a police escort and entered the stadium to a hero’s welcome with a huge party like atmosphere complete with traditional Korean dancers, VIP’s, flags, and an amazing karate demonstration by a group who did back flip kicks, wood chops and huge jumps. It’s hard to describe but a very very cool thing to watch. The night finished off with a huge fireworks display, they went all out for this ceremony and was broadcast live thanks to ESPN. It was seriously more like an Olympic Games opening ceremony than a world championships. A night no one will forget.

Day one of comp: The river dropped a little and things got a little bony around part of the sprint. Not ideal but the comp got started with the sprint and head to head race. An unfortunate starting line on the Head to Head race meant everyone who started on the river left lane all proceeded through to the next round which was a little disappointing. However these things happen. A few teams from different countries were unimpressed.

Russia , the odds on favorites had a bad line at the end of the leg as they got caught up in the rocks. This meant they had a poor gate choice in the head to head where USA beat them.

Today saw it’s share of controversy, however made for an interesting day that’s for sure.

Current standings are as follows:

Brazil BRK 1
Japan JPN 2
Slovakia SVK 3
Italy ITA 4
Germany GER 5
U S A USA 6
Bosnia-Herzegovina BIH 7
Great Britain GBR 8
Russia RUS 9
Mexico MEX 10
Indonesia INA 11
Australia AUS 12
Hungary HUN 13
Netherlands NED 14
Czech Republic CZE 15
Slovenia SLO 16
Canada CAN 17
South Africa RSA 18
Ecuador ECU 19
Croatia CRO 20
Kazakhstan KAZ 21
Argentina ARG 22
Korea KOR 23
Austria AUT 24
India IND 25
Philippines PHI 26
Serbia SER 27
Denmark DEN 28

Tomorrow slalom.

You can check out a few of our pictures at:
http://picasaweb.google.com/ausraftteam/Korea2007

 

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