HP Team in Europe

HP Manager Grant Restall reports...

Update 1

The team has arrived into Europe ready for battle in the first two World Cups.

Ben has travelled to England prior to the rest of the team as he has arranged to get on the Olympic course to do some training with the English K1 1000 hopeful Paul Witcherly. Ben will join the team in Poland on Sunday night.   The others are training in Dachau near Munich in Germany on the regatta course that was used for the Munich Olympics in 1972. After travelling 27hours the team got off the plane at 5.40am and was into the first training session by 10am then completed another session in the afternoon.

Lisa Carrington and Steve Ferguson said it was the best they have travelled and all the team spent time preparing for the problems associated with long haul flights and this has appeared to have paid off. There are things you can do to help the body clock adjust faster. Things like eating the correct food types at the correct times, not wearing sunglasses in the mornings, blue light lamps at certain times, sleeping at European times etc.  

The team is training at Dachau until Sunday when they travel to Poznan Poland to prepare for World Cup 1 starting on Friday 18th May. The draws and results can be seen on the website www.kayakpl.com. So for the team, these are the first full international races they have done for 9 months. They are edgy but keen to get into some racing.

Poland has three important kayak races on next week, the first being the final European qualifying races were the last European Olympic spots are decided. The second is the Para World Kayak champs where Scott Martlew is representing New Zealand and the third being World Cup 1. With Para kayaking being introduced into the Rio Para Olympics, Scott is using this World Champs to bench mark his ability and gain valuable International experience. Currently Scott and his coach Leigh Barker are training and adapting in the Czech Republic and they fly into Poznan on Saturday 12th May.

So conditions are good for early summer in Europe with temps in Germany in the mid twenties. Czech has had some thirties and Ben said he’s had some cooler weather than that. Prior to the team leaving there was some concern over the changeable weather in early summer but so far all is good.

Onwards and upwards!