Unofficial UK Slalom BBS

The Pan Celtic can be a great event. It's a great opportunity for younger paddlers to get a taste of "international" racing. But this year it was almost invisible. We haven't even seen the results.
The whole idea of the Pan Celtic is that it's an event that we shout about beforehand, watch, and want to see the results. Sadly, we don't seem to be interested. For years now we've piggybacked it onto ranking events, and even split the age groups across different races.
Maybe we should accept that too few people are really interested, and can it.

Yes we enjoy the pan Celtic how about junior selection and the pan Celtic run alongside each other and div 1/P race on the other day over a weekend?? It would be a struggle to get the younger junior categories running on the same course though??

The highlight of this years racing was Pan Celtic Teams at First Cardiff Prem and then Bala div 2/3.
Everyone was smiling and had a fantastic time.
All the kids loved competing for their home nations and it was a pleasure to see.
We even managed to get the Top 3 GB K1W team competing at Cardiff.

So we didn't get any results published, that could be because England dominated most of the results.

In order to get the Pan Celtic running again we decided on the following.
Each year the event moves around the home nations, so 2021 was England and we managed to get the event running at Tees but with No Teams.
This Year it was Wales and the event was at Cardiff and Bala. Team events were the highlight of the weekend, but for reasons we didn't get full results, except everyone that came 1st got a medal.
Next year it's Scotland and at the moment there are not any event nominated. So come on Scotland, whats happening.

So in order to get the event up and running again I took the job on as being England Team Manager, as a competitor , coach, its hard to do everything. So if we have any volunteers out there, some help would be appreciated.

With the proposal to limit the Number of Div 1/P events in any One year maybe for 2023 we could Have a Pan Celtic/ Teams on a Saturday, along with an Open event and then P/1 on Sunday.
Also Ireland are developing a course so maybe we could have it over there including a ranking event. Free Guinness at every Upstream Gate.

It would make sense for the Pan Celtic to be at the Grandtully Prem/Div 1 race in April. I'll speak to the Scottish Slalom committee and see what they say.

For many paddlers, competing for their Home Nation is an honour and they should be proud to represent their country. Those who compete for GB are unlikely to value competing for their Home nation. The majority of coaches and paddlers on GB program don't appear to value any domestic races and so the GB paddlers won't be competing at the ranking race let alone race for their Home Nation. However this should not detract from the race.

It does need someone other than the organiser to collate the Pan Celtic results after the race and ensure they are published (this also applies to Junior Championship races too). That needs another volunteer though and volunteers are getting thinner on the ground as sports becomes more consumer based.

On a related note, are the GB Junior 16 and Vet Champs also in Scotland next year?

Yes, I believe the J16 & Vets champs should be in Scotland next year