Our coach, Jean-Jerome Perrin, from France arrived yesterday morning in Johannesburg. We’re now back in Bethlehem and doing the final preparations before we leave here on Friday for some “Team South Africa” events before we fly to Beijing on Sunday.
I’ve also updated “The Inside Edge” on how you can see if somebody is a good paddler or now
Well this is our last week of training at home before we head off to the Olympics! I’m fetching Jerome in Johannesburg tomorrow. We’ll be back up there on Saturday for an in studio SABC interview followed by the Official Team South Africa dinner at Montecasio. Sunday morning we fly out.
Training has been going well but it is very cold (-5) in the morning’s so we are doing most of our sessions in the middle of the day.
It is SO nice to be back here after more than 10 weeks overseas! I’ve just updated the “Inside Edge” about the boat’s we’ll be up against in 4 weeks time
Christian “MUH” Bahmann came 6th in yesterday’s C1 final in the Augsburg World Cup Race!!!!! It’s Muh’s best C1 result at an International event. Muh’s been a C1 paddler for years and in 2004 changed into C2 and came 4th at the Olympics in Athens and the following year won the World Champs in Sydney with partner Michael Sneft. Not only is Muh one of the World’s best C boaters his Mom also won the 1972 Olympics and both of them are coaching the Chinese team for the Beijing Olympics!
Added to this Muh did a presentation on his design of the NWC (National White-Water Center) in South Africa this week to his professors in Augsburg for his final Architecture project. Well done the Muh!
Benoit Peschier, the 2004 Olympic Gold medallist had an awesome 2nd run today to climb from 8th to 2nd place! In the 1st run he picked up a touch in gate 6 but showed that he knows how to take the pressure. We are really proud of Benoit! Well done
I’ve just loaded up the Video’s of our 2nd runs on the VIDEO AND PHOTO PAGE. The qualify in the feed we got was shocking so I’m sorry for that. You can see how well we were going right to the end when the mistakes came in.
Master came unstuck towards the end of his 1st run as his nose hit a barrier just before upstream 13 and he got bounced back into the current and down the next stream thereby getting a 50. His 2nd run was much better but not good enough for the semi-final.
I’ll load a video up in the next few hours
Lindelani and I had a solid race today. In the 1st run we right at the end o