'Sluice' Rodeo

Last weekend the biggest freestyle competition of the year, the Wavesport Sluice Rodeo, was scheduled to take place at, of course, Sluice. However a few days before hand the ESB said that they couldnt guarantee a release on the Liffey for the day so the whole event was shifted to Stackallen, a sweet little wave/hole on the Boyne. When everyone saw the feature I think everyones first thought was why did I travel for a competition on this, especially Claire O'Hara, Paul King, Sam Anderson and Kim Aldred, the crew that had travelled over from England especially for the competition! The wave was a lot better than it looked from the bank tho, since it had a shoulder on each side with a retentive foampile in the middle hole moves and wave moves were both possible on it.

We had a bit of a mission to get up to the competition in the first place, me and Neil got the bus up from Limerick at half 5 in the morning and then spent a few hours standing around on O'Connel bridge corner waiting for the Donegal legend that is Lee Doherty to find us and give us a lift out to the Boyne! Pretty much as soon as we got there we jumped on the water and spent the day on the water trying to figure out the spot.

 The competion itself went really well. The format with 15 minute heats and 5 people in each heat was great since it meant you could try any moves you wanted without worrying about flushing, and since only everyones 5 highest scoring moves counted people were really pushed to try to throw the biggest moves possible. Watching some of the English lads was something else. Watching Claire, current womens world champion, and Sam Anderson throwing moves like they were on a feature 5 times the size of Stackallen really showed that Irish freestyle paddling has a lot of catching up to do! Some of the Irish juniors are really coming on tho, Billy Brett especially seems to get better with every competition!  I was happy with how the competition went too, I managed to stick enough moves to get me into 3rd place behind Sam Anderson and Adrian Durrant. Just have to keep improving like that over the next few years and see how it goes!



Results:

Junior Men: 1st Billy Brett, 2nd Conor Macken, 3rd David McClune.

Junior Women: 1st Kim Aldred, 2nd Niamh Cleary, 3rd Caoimhe Farrel.

Senior Women: 1st Claire O'Hara, 2nd Aisling Griffin, 3rd Muireann Lynch.

Senior Men: 1st Sam Anderson, 2nd Adrian Durrant, 3rd Eoin Keyes.

C1: 1st Orky, 2nd Paul King, 3rd Kev McCabe.

Video from the day by Conor Macken:



A few pictures by outdoorcommunity.ie: