Great Course - Well organised Rugby CC

General slalom chatter...rant about the bad, rave about the good
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c2canoeslalom
Posts: 41
Joined: Fri May 28, 2004 10:36 pm
Location: Sheffield

Post by c2canoeslalom » Wed May 23, 2007 3:04 pm

Mick h wrote:There were some fantastic gate combinations when you got them right especially 5 to 9, I nailed it a couple of times over the weekend and it really felt sweet.

Personally I thought that that particular combination of gates was the worst, in particular 7, 8 and 9. I'm all for making courses tight, but there is no point in making a course tight for the sake of making it tight. I feel that gate 8 was placed poorly with regard to the rock and how tight it forced paddlers into the up.
As for the move in the looping pool.... Good use of the feature! But the breakout above the plug hole....again was poorly set. Everyone is talking about making a course challenging but this upstream could have been set in a much better place. There are plenty of places where it could have been set.
A challenging stagger could have been set on the wave train after the muncher to test the more able paddlers, but still leave the less experienced guys with options of spins and back offs if they didn't think they could go direct. It looked like the designer ran out of gates at the finish!
RESIST OR SERVE

Nick Penfold
Posts: 338
Joined: Thu May 27, 2004 8:21 pm

Post by Nick Penfold » Sun May 27, 2007 4:06 pm

I wasn't at this one, but looking through the results is interesting. I've never seen anything like them.
In the entire event, only two paddlers pulled off a clear run - and then only one each. They were officials, both good Prems.
Of 51 K1M men, only 13 didn't 50 on at least one run.
The winner had four touches on his better run.
Ponder, with reference to Rule UK 20.3. Also rule 20.2.1, bearing in mind the best time achieved - 119.30 if you disregard penalities, or 127.30 if you count them in.

John Sturgess
Posts: 280
Joined: Thu May 27, 2004 12:01 am
Location: Gedling, Nottingham/Long Preston, North Yorkshire

Post by John Sturgess » Mon May 28, 2007 12:45 pm

And if we had an Open Entry system as virtually every one does, the Prems would have been able to race it - along with those sub-Division 1 paddlers who would have benefitted from it -but wih only Div 1 paddlers getting ranking points

Woodsie
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Joined: Wed May 23, 2007 6:18 pm
Location: Rugby

Post by Woodsie » Mon May 28, 2007 3:59 pm

Well, I have read the comments with interest and thank those who have given informative feedback. These have been taken on board. It is interesting to read the views of others, which I have never recieved so much feedback (good and bad) in the 15 years of designing at this level. Thanks to this chat room.. :laugh:

However, refering to comments from Nick pointing out rule 20.2.1 it is a recommendation minimum time not a necessity.

And a comment from C2canoeslalom:-
"It looked like the designer ran out of gates at the finish!"
You are near to the truth, due to a misunderstanding where the finish was going to be we had to add an additional gate. Albeit, sometimes I feel a lot of course designer emphasis a lot of moves on the bottom section, it was an idea to allow the paddler to chose the route to the finish.

I design the courses to force the paddlers to think and chose best routes. Over the years there have been courses which have had no imagination or creativity - which I think leads to boring and typical courses which have been trained on over and over again. It has always been my mission to not create the 'usual' moves and give some excitment and hopefully enjoyment from the course.

I'm sorry if you feel that this was not part of racing tactic, but there are other races which will have the down river racing design that you can do better there.

Course designer

AnitaB
Posts: 5
Joined: Tue Dec 05, 2006 5:45 pm

Post by AnitaB » Sat Jun 02, 2007 11:19 pm

This was exactly the type of course that we need in slalom!!! Woodsie was absolutely right in her thinking behind this course. I thinkthat by moving only two gates, just slightly, particularly the one bihind the pyramid rock and i can't remember the other one, it could have been a brilliant course. It made all paddlers think, every gate was a 'live' one because you had to think about your positioning for each one and that is what slalom is all about. I really liked the comment about stamp collecting because as they say, sorry had a couple of beers and cant remember who said what by this stage, if you didn't love this course to death you really should be taking up a different hobby. MOre of these please Woodsie for England!!! :D cheers, masters

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