National Regatta 5 - Nottingham September 03
15-September-2003I know that Steve wanted to prompt 200m racing for both canoes and kayaks, however, did really need to go this far!
Below is Steve filling in the 3rd sport in the Leighton Buzzard C4
These images are taken from the Nature Images - where super high quality images can brought.
 |
 |
02-September-2003
Last weekend saw the final regatta of 2003 held in Nottingham England. Times were again slow, seeing 200m times slow by around 3 seconds! Unfortunately we have not had a regatta in 2003 where there was not a head wind of some kind, nobody has been able to show their real form!
Being the end of season, and clashing with the World Championships Preparation, you would expect participation to be poor. In fact, participation was better than it has been most of the season. This being partly due to the change in timetable, moving the 200m races to after the 1000m racing had finished, thus allowing those paddlers concentrating specifically on the Olympic Distances to participate without fear of affecting their Olympic Events. Also, being the club championships, people were entering more events, putting crew boats together with other club members (rather than best boat combinations) and generally rallying round!
In total there were 356 races held over the weekend, with entrants from some of the top clubs exceeding 40 paddlers for the main events, with some clubs also entering 10 - 15 paddlers in the Lightning Cup event (Under 10 and Under 12 years old). The race organisers confirmed that this was the largest event of the year to date! (and for many years)
The Mens 200m K1 event was won again by Andrew Kelly of Royal, with Steve Tingay from Leighton Buzzard in 2nd and Steve Moule from Chelmsford a very close 3rd. Other paddlers, including World Class Performance and Potential Paddlers were a little further down the rankings.
Andrew has now won 4 out of 5 regattas this season (the 3rd regatta of the season he was forced to miss due to illness), so is undoubtedly the top GB 200m K1 sprinter for 2003 (hopefully this will soon be reflected in the 200m.info GB Rankings, once the official results have been published). It is very unfortunate that Andrew was not selected for the World Championships this season, an honour which he greatly deserves!
In the Mens K2 event, we saw a number of crews line up, but with the face of Gavin Turrell sadly missed from the startline. Gavin is preparing for his wedding, coming up in the next couple of weeks! Nonetheless, another great race, seeing Andrew Kelly and Mark Hoile storm home to victory!
Lastly, the Mens K4 event saw 3 boats line up. A good turnout by anybodies standards, however, if the no late entries for K4's had not been applied, there would have been at least 1 or 2 more boats lining up in this race! (a Leighton Buzzard boat would have been entered for sure). Another close 200m race, seeing Chelmsford take the victory this time, with a solid Lincoln boat come home 2nd, and a rather wobbly Elmbridge boat come in 3rd.
Next season, we would welcome more paddlers to enter the K4 200m racing, and hopefully see more 200m paddlers racing than 500 and 1000m paddlers racing in the A classes! There are plenty of paddlers about, and with the help of 200m.info, we would like to facilitate crew boat development!
In the C1 200m class, we saw Matthew Lawrence from Leighton Buzzard win by a very small margin over Karl Yurkwich of Royal Leamington Spa.
The highlight of Team 200m.info member, Steve Tingay's, weekend, was being asked to paddle in a C4 1000m race. A little long and quite alien to race on 1 knee, but Leighton Buzzard needed the club points, and with some very able Canoe Paddlers in the boat, the crew came home to take the victory. Anyone with any pictures of Steve pulling faces and panicking his way down the course, please send them in!
