This is David’s final week of warm weather training in Sydney before he braces himself for his return to cold and wet Britain.
He has been fortunate to escape the extremes of weather Australia experienced during his stay, with drought in the west, floods in the west and the cyclone to the north, but it has been very hot. Last weekend saw him put the training to one side, to compete in the Australian Open. Talking about the event, he had this to say, “After four weeks of training here in Australia, it was the Australian Open. With so many international paddlers over here, also warm weather training, the race had a big start line. It’s very early in the season and the main focus of being over here is hard training, but it was good to have a race as part of the preparations for as the main season, as it draws ever nearer”.
David raced in both the C1 class and in the C2 with canoe partner Richard Hounslow with encouraging, but not celebratory results. Explaining, David went on to say, “The race didn’t go great, but didn’t go badly for me either. Making it through qualification and then through the semi-final to the finals in both C1 and C2 was great. My final C1 run went fairly well, but sadly I just missed out on the medals in 4th place. In C2 Richard and I had a few mistakes in the final, resulting in us finishing in 5th position. Double Olympic and triple World Champion, Tony Estanguet, of France, took the gold in C1 and the Skantar cousins of Slovakia took the C2 win. It’s always disappointing to miss out on the medals, but it’s very early in the season and the training has been really good here in Australia. I felt I was just lacking a bit of sharpness, which isn’t a problem for me this early on in the year”.