Flesk Race

T-wave rodeo was a great success and spurred Colin Wong to organise the next event down in county kerry on his local run the flesk.

Kerry has some amazing rivers and the flesk is one of the best Ireland has to offer. The race took place on the middle Flesk, from the gates to the eddy above pollgorm bridge. This is 2km of class 4-5 whitewater and was most definitely going to be a challenge.

December 3nd came and the levels were right making the race a good to go. Toby Orky and I loaded up the van and headed south.

We arrived at the flesk a little bit late but still got to fit in a practice run. This was well needed, to brush up on the memory of all the lines as it had been quite some time since I was on this river.

There was a great turn out at the race with over 30 paddlers on the water and over 14 competitors of Ireland's top paddlers. With all the safety set up the first heat got under way, paddlers who weren't in the first heat had to do safety.

This gave me a chance to get in a second run.

I was the 3rd up in the second heat and Colin was the last to race. My run went pretty well with only one small cock up. It was the first time running this river solo which was a bit intimidating but all the main rapids had safety so there was nothing to worry about. I made it down to the end and across the line.

There was very little between the times but at the end of the day Neil Slevin was crowned king of the Flesk with an impressive 12minutes and 7 seconds, closely followed by Colin Wong, only a second off the pace. full results are below.

1st - Neil Slevin 12.07

2nd - Colin Wong 12.08

3rd - Toby Fischer 12.15

4th - Paddy Mc Govern 12.16

5th - Barry Loughnane 12.25

6th - Eoin keyes 12.30

7th - David O Sullivan 12.32

8th - Sean Mc Ternan 13.04

9th - (John) Orky O'Rourke 13.10

10th - Andrew Regan 13.29

11th - Dave David Glasswell 13.35

12th - Andre Brodkorb 14.26

13th - Colm Johnson 16.29

14th - Brian Cahill n/a

The race (and after party) was a great success and hopefully will inspire more events like this around the country.

Thanks again to Colin Wong and Snax for organising this event and hopefully we will see this happen again next year.

T-wave Rodeo

Over the past few weeks Ireland's water levels have been pretty high but this was the perfect opportunity to hit the road and travel up the country to one of Ireland best waves in Roscommen called T-wave. A couple of friends had organised a fun rodeo when they heard the levels were up, a great way to kick start the winter sessions. It was a long drive up and one of the coldest mornings I've seen this year.

We arrived at the car park to find a fantastic turn out for such small notice with over 30 competitors. The wave wasn't at a particularly ideal level but it didn't really matter as it was my first time back in a boat in over a month and first time back at T-wave in over two years so it was a great way to get a break from the books.

The wave forms just at the bottom of a 13gate weir on the Shannon river. It can vary fro

m a nice bounce wave to a large trashy hole, on the day of the rodeo it was a mixture of three holy waves. The best thing about this feature is its large eddy that acts as a huge conveyor belt that will take from falling off the wave right back up to the start.

With a quick briefing and a few practice runs the competition got off to a start with the juniors.

The competition was a 15min jam session, 6 people per heat

I was in the second heat with Colin Wong, It got off to a good start with a helix and a few blunts but wasted a good bit of time trying to catch the wave on the far bank. Colin also started off well laying down some blunts and back blunts putting him in and 4 others into the finals.

The final saw a range of hole and wave moves been thrown down from phonixs to donkey flips but at the end of the day Tom Dumphy took first place with some impressive pistol flips. full results are below

Senior Mens prelims Expert: Tom Dunphy 2. Barry Loughnane 3. Ronnie Brennan 4. Colin Wong 5. Andrew Regan 6. Eoin Keyes 7. Concy Bredin 8. Dave 9. Adrian Durrant 10 Orky 11. Eoin Farrell 12. Bosco 13.Snax 14.Mark Carrol 15. Kevin Niland 16. Colm Healy

It was a Great day - fair play to Barry and Andrew for putting on a good show and Adrian Durrant for judging! hopefully it will come back again next year, and it was a great way to spark off talk of other shotgun events that will be taking place around the country. Next up the flesk race.

some of the photos of the comp here