Summer session

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TEVA EXTREME OUTDOORGAMES IVREA

After several years in Val Sesia the 2009 edition of the TEVA Extrem Outdoorgames took place in the beautiful valley of Chiusella and the artificial whitewater stadium at Ivrea. The base camp for Thursday and Friday was in Fondo deep in the valley of Chiusella.

The first competition was the individual long distance race on the river Chiusella. The race course I found more difficult then it was in the past on the Egua. After all the scary stories the evening before and the damaged boat beside the river, I was glad when I reached the finish without any injuries or damages. In the afternoon the top 20 had to race on the upper upper Chiusella. With some big drops, slides and some nasty holes, the name "extreme race" really deserved to be called so. In some ways I was glad that I missed the top 20 and could take some pictures :-)

On Thursday evening all the competitors got a delicious dinner with plenty of wine. It was quite an amusing evening. And even quiet paddlers started talking a lot...

On Friday morning it was time for the team race on Chiusella. Because Swiss paddler Severin hit his head during the top 20 race on the upper upper Chiusella he suffered from a headache and couldn't start. As a replacement Josh Neilson from New Zealand joined the Swiss team. Keen Van Kuipers joined the Swiss team as well. Instead of three paddlers we were four. The event judges agreed as far as we not be considered in the final results. So we startded as a three nation team and came down quite well. If they would have included us in the results we would have been in the fourth place out of eleven teams. Team New Zealand won in front of team France, followed by the team Slovenia.

Saturday the competition took place in the artificial whitewater stadium at Ivrea. First I thought it's wrong to make an "extreme" competition in a man made river. After my first training runs I had to change my mind. The race course was much harder than I thought. There were quite big holes and some pushy eddies. During the slalom I tried to race safe and I came through without touching ore missing a gate. This brought me to ranking 20. Unfortunately Severin touched a gate that costs him 50 seconds extra. Much better it worked out for Lukas Wielatt. He raced very well and reached position 10. The winner was Dejan Kral from Slovenia in front of Mike Dawson (NZ).

The sprint race was in the afternoon. Every competitor had to race twice. This made it quite hard. I raced okay but went twice to early into the eddy and lost some seconds. In my opinion they shoud use light barriers instead of common stop watches. This would help to make some results more reliable.

On Saturday evening the team slalom race started. Again three paddler from one nation had to start together and had to pass some down und uppstream gates. Every team worked out his own strategy. So did the Swiss team. Our plan was to keep a gap of some meters between paddler 2 and paddler 3. Unfortunately this didn't work out well. So we crashed into each other and finally missed some gates. Fortunately other nations had similar problems. Again we were on place 4 if they had ranked us.

The last race was the Boater-X on Sunday morning at 10 o'clock. I had to race against Michele Ramazza (Italy), Daniel Herig (Austria) and Steven Van Den Heuvel (Belgium). Some strong and fast paddlers. Therefore I was really suprised when I realised that I was leading the race. I defended my postion until the end of the race where I made a big mistake and missed the eddy with the checkered flag which I had to touch. Even if I didn't win this heat, it showed me, that I'm able to keep up with some fast guys.

Finally the winner of the Boater-X was Jakobus Stengelein (Germany). He raced very well and deserves the titel of the Boater-X champ.

In the overall results the winner was Dejan Kral from Slovenia in front uf Kiwi paddler Mike Dawson. Severin Haeberling reached place 23. just in front of me, followed by Lukas Wielatt.

In my opinion the TEVA Extreme Outdoorgames 2009 was a really good event and the new location brought some freshness with it. Thanks to the whole organizer team for this great event.

Check out: http://www.tevaextremeoutdoorgames.it/

Uganda

In the meantime I'm back from Uganda for almost a week. It's quite difficult to put impressions and experiences into words. Nevertheless I try to write down some lines:

Because of my studies I couldn't go for more than two weeks and I thought it wouldn't be worth to travel that far for such a short time. But now I see this from a different point of view. Due to the huge amount of impressions and the complet different African culture it was quite enough :-)

All in all Uganda was really worth to visit. The White Nile is a nice river for kayaking and playboaters will find some awesome playspots. Water temperature is about 27°C, sunshine all day long and an unique wildlife beside the river impressed me. Not to mention the friendly people. I've never seen kids running after you just to shout "Jambo, Jambo!". They're just happy to see tourists. I guess to them it's a welcome change to see a "Muzungo" (word for white person).



The river itself offers some nice rapids. The good thing is, that after every rapid there's a pool. If something goes wrong your mates can pick up the pieces at the bottom of the rapid :-) To surf "Nile Special" was really cool even though they said that the waterlevel is to low for running "Special" perfectly. I didn't care to run it at bad waterlevel - I would be happy to have a shity Nile Special at home.




Some friends of mine which have been to Uganda before told me, that "Hairy Lemon" gets boring after some days. At this point I should mention, that "Hairy Lemon" is a small Island at the end of the day 2 section. Wow, I've never seen such a cozy place. There's nothing beside some lazy kayakers. No cars, no planes - just quitness. Well, quitness is maybe the wrong word if you consider the noise of the Cicadas and frogs early in the morning... And I guess it was the first time I found time to read an entire book to the end. That should make it clear how relaxing "Hairy Lemon" was.



If you want to go kayaking on the White Nile and paddle the top section you should go there soon. I'm not a construction engineer but it seems to me that the dam in construction for an electrical power plant is widely advanced. The shuttel from the international airport at Entebbe to Bujagali I booked on http://www.kayakthenile.com/. The guys from KTN are really friendly and helpful.

Weather is not that important...

For all these guys out there who don't have the possibility right now to leave the northern hemisphere. I'm with you;-)

Thun River Jam

Meanwhile the River Jam 2008 is over... It was a great event with perfect conditions. The weather couldn't be better and the wave was quite nice. The competitors showed some strong rides with plenty of action.

To mention the legendary party at the Cafe Bar Mokka. I guess some paddlers were still drunk during their final runs today;-)

Thanks to Simon Hirter for this nice event! Below some pictures from the TRJ 2008.

My new helmet:-)

Movie trailer of the TEVA TOUR 2008

During May the TEVA Tour 2008 took place in Europe. Invited were 15 international kayakers which were travelling through five countries within 14 days. The whole trip was filmed and documented by a profesional filmcrew (http://www.lieuwma.com/). Now the movie trailer came out last week. The final movie will be released in September.

Have a look and get a first impression about the TEVA Tour 2008;-)

TEVATOUR 2008

The TEVATOUR 2008 is over and I'm already back to school. What a difference between today and two weeks ago! But my mind is still filled with countless memories of beautiful rivers and exciting moments.

The start of the Tour was on May 12th after the TEVA Mountaingames at Sesia. The crew consisted of 15 international kayakers, 2 videofilmers, 1 photographer and the organizers. The first days we spent in the valley of Sesia. There we paddlet the Egua. One of the steppest runnable rivers for kayaking in Europe.

On Tuesday evening we drove to Avegno in Switzerland and on Wednesday we paddled the Verzasca at brilliant sunshine and crystal clear water.

On Thursday we drove up to the put-in for the Melezza. Unfortunately we couldn't paddle it because of high water danger caused by a hydraulic plant. So we decided to paddle the Ribo. A classic River with a 15m drop at the beginning.

Friday we left the camp at Avegno and drove towards north. By the Schöllenen gorge we stopped and some of the guys paddlet the first two drops of the "Devils gorge".

In the evening we arrived at Elm where the "Straight Down Striit" race took place. On Saturday the race started with plenty of water. I had some good races but didn't make it into the finals. Sam Sutton, the kiwi boy, was way to fast and dropped me out of the race. By the end Ron Fischer won the "Straight down Striit" again as last year. The whole TEVA team did very well at the race and so we were partying far into the night.

After a great breakfast on Sunday morning we drove further to Versam. Despite the cold temperatures the whole crew went for a short run on the Vorderrhein. Even the camera crew joined us with a raft. The camp at Carrera offered spectacular views through the Vorderrhein valley.

On Monday we paddled the Medelserrhein. A small creek with some nice drops.

Tuesday was quite exciting. It was still raining when we drove up to the Valserrhein. Pat Keller from the United States and Sam Sutton from New Zealand decided to paddle a 25m meter drop. We stood down at the bottom of the big drop for safety. We couldn't see anything of the descent. Everything went so quickly. Pat paddled first followed by Sam. Unfortunately Sam bit through his lips and needed 5 stiches at the hospital. Nevertheless I was quite happy when both of them were down without serious injuries.

After the cold days we went to the indoor swimming pool at Chur to relax before we drove to Bregenz for the last day. Unfortunately I had to leave the groupe by Wednesday evening because I had to go back tu study on Thursday.

The last two weeks were just amazing! It was not just all about paddling. It was the whole trip with the whole groupe which I realy estimated. I would like to thank TEVA, Barry, Kris, Arnd, Casper and especially DLD which made this all possible to me!

All pictures by Thilo Brunner (http://www.thilobrunner.com/). For more pictures check out http://www.tevatour.com/