April Regatta 2007

Well, I've known regattas held up by a number of weather conditions over the years that HPP has been open - snow, high winds, thunder storms - but fog is unusual. The water conditions were perfect - glassy smooth, but not a race was to be seen for the first hour & a half of Sunday's racing. The hot sun later, more than made up for it & by 10:30 on Sunday, most people had forgotten the reason that racing was delayed so long! Go to http://nkcgallery.blogspot.com/ for a reminder.
Cathy Howell was one of the first Nottingham paddlers out on the corse for the Saturday events.

Over the 2 days there were some interesting results. Jonny Schofield, whoever he is, popped out of White Water & stirred up a storm in the 200 metres with a course record. Ed McKeever/Ed Cox in the K2 managed the same, but that was more expected. Tim Brabants did what was expected of him in the 1000 metres & replicated it in the 500 to the visible annoyance of Schofield. Most other paddlers in the world would have been fairly pleased to have been 2nd to Tim, given his form over the past few years.


Other Nottingham paddlers, such as Lucy Wainwright & Shuna Braithwaite returned good performances with Shuna promoted back to Women's A. Ralph Baker & Richard Winstanley managed a first & second in the K2s. What a pity that Ralph couldn't manage his heat time in the final! Get a full pdf copy of the results from http://www.weykayak.co.uk/Sprint_Frame.html

The junior Girls D results may seem a little disappointing till you look at the promotions, many of which should have happened at the September regatta, but for the weather, or been done by knowledgable team leaders during the winter as they were asked to.

Delete the promoted entries & the finals would have been more like a Girls D race than Girls C. The same was true for Boys C & D.

Rex Littlewood's Masters A K1 500 final was so close that the naked eye could not work it out. Sadly Rex was just 2nd. Although what's to be sad about a good result! I managed a 2nd in the 1000 and appeared to come 3rd in the 500 of Masters B until the Richmond paddler failed to turn up for boat weighing leaving me 2nd on the results. The most enjoyable race for me though, was the Masters K4 5Km National Champs, where good pace & tactics from Rex helped Norman, Baggy & myself cross the line 20 seconds or so ahead of Lincoln. Funny that we all thought that it would be the Reading boat that gave us a run for our money! Just shows how much energy the Olivers with Andy Grimwood & an imported paddler can still summon up!