With the main competition season now over David shares his thoughts with us, reflecting on the World Championships and looking forward to the next challenges.
After the Worlds, his most recent race was a less stressful event at the Scottish Championships, where he enjoyed winning silver medals in the C1 class and also in the C2 event with canoe double slalom partner Richard Hounslow. The Scottish Championships took place at Grandtully, near Perth, on a natural whitewater course on the River Tay on the 25th September.
With the Scottish Championship completed and now able to relax a bit and take stock, this is what David had to say, “…winning a medal at the World Championships was fantastic – a huge achievement”.
“The World Championships and pinnacle of the year for canoe slalom was on the whole a huge success for me. I’ve never previously won a medal in an Olympic discipline at the World Championships and to have done it after training at C2 for only two years was incredible. Richard and I were delighted with it. It was very exciting at the time. We qualified well, in 5th place. Then we had an ok semi-final run, but not great. It was tight to make the final, and we just made it through in 9th place out of 10 boats to progress to the final. This meant we were the 2nd boat to race in the final and we had a fairly solid run, but didn’t have a great run of the water in places. We knew it wasn’t a super fast run, but that the course would also be very tough for the remaining 8 boats to come. We just had to wait and watch and as it worked out we ended up getting onto the podium.”
“In C1 I was paddling well, but just didn’t have a run that flowed well in the semi-final and narrowly missed the final by less than a second in 12th place. I had, however, been second in the qualifying stage which was a huge positive to draw from the race.”
“Now that the Worlds are over for the year, our main season has drawn to a close and I’ll have a bit of down time. I’ll be using the next few weeks to evaluate the season and my training, but for now my thoughts are that I’m trying to win medals in two events at London and it definitely seems possible. I’ve medalled at the two major races of the year in C2. And in C1 I’ve put myself high up in the medal places in qualifying and semi-finals on numerous runs.”