Pantin is a pretty cool looking spot! Photo by Donie McLoughlin.
So, as anyone who keeps an eye on this might have guessed, we have been back from Spain for a while now! My plan to keep this updated while I was over there didn't really work out, since my phone got fried by a dodgy adaptor and I had no other way of getting online. The time since arriving back in Ireland has been spent chilling out, surfing, fishing, windsurfing, doing a bit of freestyle training and van shopping (although that plan just hit a major speed-bump; pretty disappointing since I've been looking forward to owning a van for years!) and I guess it's time I put a few words together about the surf worlds! The trip was a great experience, with lots of ups, a few downs and lots of time spent hanging out with some really cool people!
The team at the opening ceremony and parade. Looking flash in the team gear that Darragh Walsh sorted for us!
Before the competition started we had a few days to get to know the wave where the competition was going to be held and acquaint ourselves with the layout of the area where we were staying. The break at Pantin is awesome; it's easy to see why they have a WQS competition there every year! The bay hoovers up an incredible amount of swell, and directs it towards a sandbar beside a cliff which creates a decent wave at virtually all stages of the tide. Directly inside the main peak is a small island, which creates a deep channel between itself and the cliff and gives an easy route to paddle out. This channel stays totally clear on all but the biggest days, and even then it takes most of the difficulty out of paddling out which is relatively unusual for a European beach break! On the good days the wave started from a well-defined take-off spot, built up into a steep, fast walling section, backed off a little giving time for a few cutbacks and finally walled up again before closing out. It's a great wave that gives opportunities for pretty much the full range of manouvers and there was some seriously impressive surfing done during the week! The downside of such a good break in the middle of summer is of course the crowds. The huge influx of kayakers for the competition created tension with the local board surfers, and some other countries appeared to play by slightly different priority rules than we do which lead to several verbal disagreements on the water. Thankfully verbal disagreements were as far as it went; there were no collisions and no injuries so it was all good at the end of the day!
We got a couple of pretty big days! Great fun, and in competition you get to surf it with just three other people on the water! Photo by Aisling Griffin.
Bar the first few days on the water, the rest of the event ran with an incredibly relaxed atmosphere. The event schedule each day was finalised at pretty late notice, which required a bit of flexibility from competitors and resulted in a lot of early mornings, but in fairness the event organisers were equally flexible. They would make sure that all competitors were on the water before starting heats and there was no hesitation in pausing the competition if two competitors needed to swap a boat between heats, which is very unusual at a world championships. They also looked after us really well during the week, providing food on a couple of evenings which usually consisted of great seafood, paella and tapas. At the team competition prize-giving in As Pontes there was a dinner of Octopus and free-flowing wine, and coincidentally there was a medieval themed party in the town that evening. All of this led to a ridiculous night spent running around a Spanish town chatting to people dressed in crazy outfits, which turned out to be deadly craic!
Bouncing around at the start of a pretty mental night in As Pontes! Photo by Donie McLoughlin.
The surf kayak world championships consists of two separate competitions; an individual competition and a team competition which took place on alternate days during the week. The individual competition kicked off the event and used an unusual format. The usual system of four-person, 20 minute heats was used but instead of the top two people from each heat going into the next round as normally happens only the top person went through. The other three people went into a reperchage round, where again only the top person from each four-man heat stayed in the competition. This made it extremely tough to progress through the competition, and after a couple of second places and third places and coming up against the eventual world champions in both long and short boat I was out of the competition after the reps. This definitely wasn't the result I was hoping for but oh well, time to get back to training and start looking forward to NI 2017!
I paddled Ant's Ride IC boat a good bit out there which was a bit of a change from the Trident I'm used to. It went great though, and is surprisingly easy to control at the top of the wave! Photo by Donie McLoughlin.
Fortunately, the team event went much better! Although we have put a huge amount of work in over the last few years running intro events and training weekends and trying to build up the team as much as possible, many members of the team hadn't been surf kayaking for very long before going to Spain. We went over expecting to have a good time and learn a lot, but had no idea how the competition was going to go. The way the team competition was run was the teams were divided into two groups of four, and you competed against three other countries over two days. Heats were made up containing one paddler from each country and points allocated for each paddler's position in each heat; the country with the lowest number of points at the end of the day wins! In the end all of the team paddled to their potential or even better in that team event and we finished up in second place in the group. The top two countries from each group went into the team finals at the end of the week, which ended up being Euskadi, England, Wales and ourselves. Even though we were fairly well outclassed on team finals day and ended up in fourth position, we were happy to have gone that far and were delighted with the result, as you can tell from the pictures of the prize giving ceremony!
One last point that I think is worth discussing before finishing up... What became very clear at Pantin was the contrast in surfing styles between the regular HP surfkayaks and the longer HP surfkayaks. Longer boats have always had an advantage in competition due to being faster to paddle out and being more capable in either very big or very small surf. However, they generally don't perform off-the lip turns in the critical section of the wave and are usually surfed with a style of surfing that uses lots of slashy cutbacks instead of big top to bottom turns. I don't know what other people think, but personally I find this style of surfing incredibly repetitive and boring to watch. Additionally, in my opinion this style of surfing lacks any kind of flow, variety, innovation or commitment; therefore, going by the criteria here: WSL Criteria, this style of surfing shouldn't score highly in competition. I think that surf boards are at the pinnacle of functional surfing, and that is the style of riding that we should be trying to emulate in our kayaks. Unfortunately, at Pantin the mid-face tail-slashy style of surfing appeared to be strongly favoured by the judges. I watched several heats containing contrasting styles and consistantly the guys throwing repetitive tail-slashes out-scored the guys surfing from top to bottom and throwing their turns off the lip of the wave; the results were consistently very different to how I would have called it if I was judging. Now I'm not against the occasional turn being a big slash in the face of the wave, but effectively the competition became a freestyle competition to see who could throw the most slashes in a row and finish it off with a cartwheel. I'm not saying that the results would have been different if the judging was different, as the top guys are capable of surfing with whatever style they want and have a choice of boats to use, however I am saying that the last few rounds of the competition would have been far more entertaining to watch, with far more airs and big lip turns, if the judges hadn't been scoring that slashy, stop-start style of surfing so highly. To me, the best surfing of the event was done by the likes of Philip Watson, Darren Bason, Julen Arrizabalaga and Xabier Olano, who were throwing tight bottom turns, off the lip top top turns, airs and roundhouse cutbacks, as well as the occasional slashed turn. I would love to hear other people's opinions on this so if you have any opinions on the topic then please throw me a facebook message. But personally I hope that something happens between now and the Northern Ireland worlds that brings surf kayaking back in line with waveski and board surfing's values of big carving turns performed in, or above, the most critical section of the wave.
Very happy with our trophy, medals and fourth place finish at Pantin!
So, that pretty much sums up how the week went! Lots of surfing, lots of good food, sunshine and some great parties! The location of the next world championships has been announced as Northern Ireland, 2017. This gives us an incredible opportunity to start building a team early and try to challenge the higher ranks of that podium next time round. If anyone wants to get involved and be part of the squad, just keep an eye on Paddlesurf Ireland on facebook and start showing up to events. We also need people to give a hand with organising and running events so if you're up for getting involved with that side of things just let us know. If anyone has any questions about what's involved then give me a shout! I want to say a huge thanks to Aisling Griffin and Mike Barry for all the work that they've put into Paddlesurf Ireland over the last couple of years. It's been a lot of hassle, taken a lot of time and effort and this year's team really wouldn't have come together without them. Hopefully seeing the team in action and paddling well over in Spain was some bit of payback for all the work that has gone in!
Edu, the eventual winner throwing a mid face slash. Regardless of the criteria being used the top surfers will adjust their surfing to suit and still come out on top, but I think this kind of thing gets repetitive and doesn't fulfill the criteria of 'radical, controlled manuvers in the critical section of the wave' as well as the regular, 'short' HP boat style of surfing. Photo by Donie McLoughlin.
