maandag 27 oktober 2014

Sickline

After Devils extreme race Bram stayed in Prague for a couple of days for a bit of slalom training. Meanwhile Axel finished his exams and hitchhiked to France for some surfing. Bram returned to Belgium, picked up two crazy beerpong pro's and headed to France where Bram and Axel rejoined and headed to the pyrenees for some kayaking.


After two good weeks in Spain and France we returned to Belgium for a couple of days before heading to Ötz, Austria. Here we would participate the Adidas Sickline extreme kayak world championships.

We arrived in Ötz 5 days before raceday. On arrival it was getting dark already and fired up from driving more than 10 hours and looking forward to kayaking we jumped in our kayak and had a few nice evening runs. These runs were our first on the Wellerbrücke course (ever!) and needless to say we didn't had the perfect lines that same evening.

The day after things were getting better, we were both finding the lines and everything went great! Tuesday morning we decided to go on the water separately so we could take some pictures. Axel went first and for some reason we were on the Wellerbrücke course before 9h. We were super stoked Axel could fire up Wellerbrücke without waiting and Bram could take some pictures. Axel went down the course real good until the new stopper at TNT. Here Axel decided to test the Exo - Six's freestyle capacity's. Turned out fine as Axel managed to get out pretty fast.



After 4 days we were ready for the race! Friday morning we had our mandatory run at 9 and our first race run somewhere around 10. First run went pretty good for Bram, Axel wasn't to happy because he didn't had his line on Championskiller.




Second run was better for both of us, but unfortunately just a bit to slow for the finals. Bram ended up 62th, 1.5 seconds to slow for the finals.. And Axel pulled of a 78th place.



The stoke is still high as we would never have thought we would race Sickline one year after buying our first creek boat. Participating Sickline was a goal on it's own and we are super happy to have reached this goal already! This Fires us up for going hard and BIG next year!!


PEACE




zaterdag 6 september 2014

Devils Extreme Race


Last weekend I (Bram) raced the Devils Extreme Race in Lipno Czech Republic. It was my first extreme kayak race, so it was a new (and awesome!) experience.

To begin with, the whole weekend was awesome! The qualification course was a 4min course with ‘Window’ in it. My race here went pretty good, lost some time at the end but it was still good as I finished 13th and the first 32 could go through to the ‘Headtohead’ system.

(Photo: Bram going on window section)

The ‘Headtohead’ was paddled on ‘The Stairs’ section. It’s a really cool section where you can paddle different lines and need to find the fastest one. I had to race against my bro Cole O’conner who had a pretty nice run, me on the other hand made some mistakes and came in after Cole. Couldn’t go trough to the next round so the individual race stopped here for me. But I was still stoked on the whole race and still pretty happy with my qualification run.


After my race I stayed to watch Mike Dawson take the win before Michal Buchtel and Sam Sutton.

(Photo: Ciaran Heurteau)

Sunday morning there was the teamrace on the full courselength. Which means we had to race +/- 14min and go down ‘Window’ , ‘Stairs’ And ‘Bloody hands’. I teamed up with 2 dutchies Martijn Van Tuijl and Robin Knuivers. We had a decent race, didn’t make any mistakes and came in third.

 (Teamrace with Bram Peeters, Robin Knuivers and Martijn Van Tuijl)

See you next year Devils Extreme Race!!





maandag 9 juni 2014

Entry Short Film of the Year Awards 2014

Some of you may already have noticed that we participate in the Short Film of the Year Awards 2014. So let us explain a few things...

What is this? Well euh it's a competition for the best kayak video of 2014, everybody can send multiple entries. The best six will be chosen to compete in the final based 50% on the judgement of a jury (kayaksession magazine) and 50% on the views of the video.

Why do we need your help!? Because 50% of our result is based on the total amount of views, so we need as many views as possible and that's were you can contribute in our succes!

The video is of our trip during the Springtime in the Pyrenees past april, we tried to show not only kayak but also the things around it. Good times with friends, lovely places and beautiful surroundings, nice weather and ofcourse positive vibrations.

In short check it out and help us a little!

Give thanks....

Link: http://tinyurl.com/k7hcb78

Video:

zaterdag 31 mei 2014

Springtime in the Pyrenees!

On the first weekend of april we had our selections in C2 for the Europeans, Worlds and World cups. The competition took place in Metz, its was during a french N1 competition. So a strong field of C2s was present including Klauss/Peche (overall winners of the world cup 2013, 4th place Olympics) and Labarelle/Peschier (European champions 2013).



The first day was a very technical course, especially in C2. But we managed to paddle it very well, qualifying for the finals, with our time in te first half of all the C2s. Although we had a good result our time was not good enough to be qualified for the Europeans... Only three of all the participating C2s would be in the time of our selections that day. We still believed that it was possible...we had one chance the next day. With a less difficult course we were optimistic, and started very fast. When al of a sudden we messed it up in the middle of the course, we don't know why...was it the fatigue or the lack of training the month before, maybe bad luck...
So this year we will not be able to compete at the Europeans in Vienna. No worries next year another chance and another year to train harder and better!

Directly after the competition we drove to Mimizan, where we stayed a couple of days for some surfing. The waves were really huge - sometimes up to three meters - meaning a lot of wipeouts and not an easy first time for Bram.



A few days later we drove to the Pyrenees to paddle L'Ouzom and Le gave du Brousset on one day! An epic start of our stay in the mountains.  The next river we paddled was a class IV piece of the rio Ara in Spain. Ending the day in Bergua near the rio Forcos ( paddled it last year) which hadn't enough water in it but still a nice place to spend the night.


Sort - home of whitewater kayak in the Pyrenees - was our next stop. Always nice to drive through a town and see a lot of kayaks on the roofs of cars, kayak-clothes drying outside, ... feeling the 'JAH' vibes.


It had rained non stop over there the last days. We heard that the rio Palomeras had a perfect level and decided to take a look and if ok, paddle it. The first drop was still covered by a glacier but the level was indeed substantial. Full of stoke we ended the day driving up to the Alto Noguera to paddle her the next day. When we woke up the weather was awesome and the waterlevel had risen to a nice high level, which meant an epic day of whitewater once again.




We also paddled the rio Veral (little bit of low flows) and ended our trip with some days of surfing in the Basque country!

Two weeks of sun, whitewater, mountains, ocean and waves.... Living the good life!


Up next:
- First week of july of to the french Alps
- Three weeks of awesomeness in the whitewater capital of Europe... NORWAY!
- September back to Sort









zondag 23 maart 2014

Radio silence

What it's almost April?! And we didn't update this blog since...euh long, a very loooooong time. Our sincere apologies for that, we really do.

The past months flew by very fast, a lot of training combined with a substantial amount of... the word you are expecting is whitewater, but we have to disappoint you. It was school that kept us busy, a lot!
And then 6 weeks ago Bram hurt is shoulder, which he has been recovering from during the last month. Now he's back in the boat but one month of absence is not the ideal preparation as you can imagine, especially with the qualifications just around the corner.

However we are still motivated to compete at the qualification race in Metz within two weeks time. This weekend we even went to Metz for some training (first time back in C2) and we were very pleased with the result.


Training went well so we still believe in a qualification for the european championships in Vienna.
After the competition in Metz we will drive through to Pau for a training-camp and of course some class V awesomeness. During this two weeks we will capture as many footage as possible to release a 'Jah' whitewater video!

We will keep you up to date of our results in Metz and in the meantime you can follow our Facebook page with more news and images....

Ciao!