The Youth Freestyle series has officially begun !
The first event saw a huge crowd of junior paddlers head to the river Dee in North Wales,
The river Dee has always been one of my favourite places to paddle, it’s home to some of the best playspots in the u.k at the right levels, has a couple of well known rapids and above all has a really chilled out atmosphere, I was really glad that the Youth Freestyle series returned to the Dee this year so that the younger paddlers could experience this stretch of river,
We were blessed with a nice medium level which easily facilitated high scoring rides but at the same time wasn’t to pushy for the beginners, However despite the organisers best efforts to organise warm sunny weather, the typical welsh weather shone through with heavy showers and low temperatures – luckily for us the juniors that attend these events are really enthusiastic about everything related to freestyle kayaking and weren’t to put off by the weather – the same couldn’t quite be said about Pringle who only returned back to the u.k from uganda the previous day.
The juniors were all split into groups and got the opportunity to be coached by some of the top paddlers in the u.k. Big smiles, new moves and huge wipe out’s where had by all !
With all of the paddlers having had their opportunity to get used to the features and gain a few tips from the coaches it was time to begin the competition – due to the temperature it was decided to run the competition in a jam style format to keep the participants a bit warmer, due to this format paddlers got multiple rides and were a lot more willing to go for bigger, more complicated maneuvers. This year the sponsored and GBR team members were separated into their own categories, to make it a bit more interesting the organisers decided to pit us all against Pringle to try and score the same or even better his ride …
The results for the event can be seen here :
 http://www.youthfreestyle.co.uk/attachments/article/41/Llangollen%20Results%202012a.pdf
A huge thank you to all the juniors that took part, the coaches/Organisers and the sponsors of the Youth Freestyle Series !
And also Brother Photography for letting me use their images !
For more information check out – http://www.youthfreestyle.co.uk/
See you on the water,
Bren
