The final of the Teva playboat cup, as well as the Open Dutch Championships Freestyle and boatercross took place last Saturday October 13th on the white water course of Dutch Water Dreams
I have to admit that the set up for this event was a little different than usually, not to say unique for a Dutch event! The perspective of this year’s final was all about one thing: Spectacle!
Saturday morning started off with the freestyle pre-lims. Instead of 2 rides of 45 second for every paddler there existed 15 minutes heats. Jamsession style, like they use in the Skateboard competition as well. Everyone gets rides of maximum 30 seconds to show his biggest 5 moves during these 15 minutes. The idea behind it was, that all the competitors at least had some wavetime if they didn’t make the cut to top 10 for the semi finals.
The field was, with more than 50 competitors, stronger than any other year before. We saw quite some ‘old bastards’ trying their return into the competition scene. As also some international names from Belgium, Germany, Switserland and Great Britain.
German Arnd Schaeftlein gave it a try in the freestyle after not being competing for 5 years, with a great result making the cut to the semi’s and later even into the finals. At the ladies Ingrid Schlott and Susanne Spoelmink fired it up into the finals.
Followed by a long afternoon break the finals were opened by the Teva Skydive team and a demonstration race of the ‘Go Fast’ jetski team. The first rider seemed like it was a tough job, which needed a lot of perfection, to race up the course in 2 minutes time. His successor ran over him by speeding it up, almost flying out of it and set a time of 30 seconds!
In the boatercross at least 80 competitors showed up. Heats of 4 paddlers raced down from a flying start. Caught the eddy just behind the big drop, halfway the course, to touch the Teva banner and than finished at the end eddy by touching the finish banner.
Top racers Benjamin and Jens from Germany made themselves favourites, next to many Dutch creekers like Rene Boom, Kees van Kuipers and Emiel Beukenkamp.
I didn’t see myself as a top favourite for the boatercross but managed to make my way through to the finals, whyle seeing a lot of good paddlers getting eliminated and Sven winning every single race easily. As he also did in the finals, leaving me on a 2nd place and Kees van Kuipers 3th.
The fully lighted course in the darkness of the night together with the big attendance of public and Eurosport’s ‘Seb van den Berg’ and ‘Gerben Klingenberg’ on the speakers set the atmosphere for the finals.
In freestyle some surprising results appeared with Tom van Kalmthout winning the junior men finals leaving Raoul Collenteur on a third place. At the ladies Lieke Servais kept her title during a strong battle with the sisters Wegman. At men senior, I managed to keep my own title above Remi Wegman and Roy Hopmans, scoring two national titles in one evening!
Thanks a lot to Rene Boom in cooperation with the Kanoshop crew to make this event possible! Also all the sponsors, like Teva, Salt, Go Fast, NKB, NKV and not to forget Dutch Water Dreams to available their course for this event.
All the pictures in this report are taken by Patrick Dolkens, wanna see more? surf to www.fotodolkens.nl.
For more news and results surf to www.tevaplayboatcup.nl.
