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Jenny McGaley

Jen McGaley
We left home on Friday evening, travelled on the Eurotunnel to Calais where we stayed the night and after a very long drive we finally arrived at the campsite in Lienz at around 11:00pm on Saturday night. The GB team training was not until Monday but I had a short paddle on Sunday to get to know the feature a bit better. The feature is a quite wide hole with a fairly friendly side where spinning and looping was easiest, (river runner’s left side) and a slightly more sticky side which dished out quite a few thrashings. The two team training sessions were on Monday and Tuesday but time was limited as all the teams needed prac-tice before the competition began on Wednesday. The junior ladies semi-finals were first thing on Thurs-day where we had two rides and both counted. I managed to spin in both and also looped in the second ride which put me in third position and through to the finals. The feature was very different on Saturday with lots of paddlers struggling to pull off their top moves. Also we had three rides with only one counting. My first two rides did not go as well as in the semi’s but the final ride was better with a spin on the shoul-der and a loop attempt which was enough to get me 6th place overall! A fantastic experience and I’m really looking forward to the next event.