The has been an incredible buzz around Seu for the last few days. The competition has been extremely fierce.

 

In my individual race I felt good on my first run with just a couple of mistakes but found myself needing to find 6 seconds on my second run to be in with a chance of qualifying for the semi finals. My second run I really tried to attack and felt really good on the course. I was a bit disappointed when I crossed the finish line to see that I had only gone 3 seconds faster but I then found out that I had been given a penalty for small touch on a gate at the top of the course which put my raw time 5 seconds faster and much closer to what I needed to do. Although I ended up in 51st place I felt that I really had raced well and theta the standard of the racing here is so intense that any slight hesitations on your run and you end up missing the top 20 and as a result the semi final. To put it into perspective I finished 1 place lower than Spain's Olympic K1 on his home course.

 

After my individual race I was really keen to get stuck in to the teams race. Warwick, Will and I had been training well together and so we knew we had a good chance if we could just put a smooth run together. We qualified for the final with a really nice run with only one penalty. In the final we went that little bit harder and everything flowed really well. It was the best team run that I had ever done. We ended up in 7th place which was a really good result for us. The only slightly sour point was that with out our penalties we would have finished 3rd and got a medal but that gives us good cause for optimism for next year and we might even do some teams training back at home.

 

The Individual Semi's and Finals are today and so I am now heading down to the course to cheer on Sarah, Kate, Ros, Leanne and Jess who are carrying the flag for Australia (figuratively, not literally)