Straightdownstriit 2010

Another weekend, another adventure. After getting back from beautiful Sessia Valley and leaving Italy, I spent just 5 days back home getting organized and left for some weekend fun kayaking with friends on Trnavka slalom course in Czech.

This is artificial channel under one of the bigger dams in Czech and every release always attracts many paddlers of different abilities to this site. This year

I came back to Trnavka after almost 3 seasons and was happy to meet many of my old friends. Fun times. For the fact, that Trnavka is a slalom course it is quite steep, technical and pushy, which was a great combination for me to try my new ZET RAPTOR. First of all, I was amazed how fast the boat is. It took me couple laps to get used to the boat's dynamic and different shape, but it was getting more predictable and easy to control after every lap, mainly after I tweaked the seat around a little bit. Trnavka is the longest artificial slalom course in the Czech Republic and also the hardest delivering solid class III- IV whitewater in concrete channel. Very good playground for testing a new boat. I was not solo with the same idea and so Marek Basta and had about 4 more Raptors for testing and free use and those were gone most of the time. So great 2 days of paddling, sharing stories, partying BBQs and also but not least sharing and discussing our feelings about the new toys. Good times.

After coming back from Trnavka I had couple very busy days getting a lot of stuff ready for my mission to Norge and by Thursday I was back on the road to Switzerland. Love to travel to new places to meet old friends. I was accompanied by Viktor Legat and Honza Lasko heading to Elm for the Straightdownstriit 2010. We slept over in Viktor's cousin place and rallied to the trainings rested and in good mood. Nothing better than sleeping in a real bed and having real coffee and good cake in the morning. Life get's even better.

The event tents

For competitors...

The event was held over three drop on WW4 stretch of the Striit river with the secong being particularly tricky forcing many competitors to roll. Next big trick was the ramp. This one proved to be very moody, sending people into rocks or onto each other. Ouch.

Honza in the training

...and on the ramp

Me, Honza and Viktor had all good qualification runs and went into the main boatercross event.

... rest time...

Honza was not very lucky with the ramp launch and the course did not offer many places to pass the opponent so unfortunately got knocked out nevertheless being one of the fastest kayakers of the event. Me and Viktor won our duels and went to next round.

Me in the race...

Viktor, leading his round

I had pretty unlucky collision at the start of my next run and after couple mistakes the race was over for me.


Viktor proved to his racing abilities and kept winning until he made a mistake in semifinals and finished 4th overall. Congratulations.

Chinese race, fun, fun

After the race we headed for a BBQ in the Circus Town. There was a party that followed the event, but Honza was leaving for TEVA games in Vail the next morning. This put us in a bit of time stress so after saying bye to all new and old friends and with promises of see you soon, we headed to Augsburg and the same night back to Prague.

Overall amazing event and a great occasion to meet friends, get some paces through good racing and enjoy the lifestyle we all love so much. I am on my way to Norway and the boys are going to represent at the TEVA games in Italy. Good luck hope to see you all at the Veko.

Photos will be added 2moro