Plattling, a small town in Bavaria. Usually it's rather quiet around there but not during the first Euro Cup of the season. 96 paddlers from 13 different nations came together in order to take part at the event and determine the Bavarian freestyle champ, the German participants for the upcoming Championship in Thun and of course the winners of this year's first Euro Cup.

Within the week before the actual event, athletes from all over already came there. Everyone wanted to show the best of his or her skills and therefore trained really hard. Peter and I arrived at Wednesday evening.
Unfortunately, we couldn't come earlier because we had to go to university.

On Thursday morning, we woke up around 5 o'clock. We thought, that if we' d get up early, we would be the first paddlers on the water but we were wrong.

We couldn't believe that already so many athletes were practicing. But it was a good decision nevertheless. During the day the place just got more and more crowded.

Our team mates Markus, Gerd and even Schorschi were among the participators.
Gerd flew there all the way from Spain. The problem was, that he flew alone and the responsible airport left his stuff back at home. During the two days he had to wait for his baggage, he was lucky enough to be able to borrow a boat and some gear. Markus just came to the competition because he wanted to win his ticket for the World Championship. Schorschi arrived the evening before the competition. He didn't paddle once that evening, instead he was the biggest party animal of them all.

When the qualification and the semi-finals started on Saturday, the water level was so low, that everyone could see the bottom of the river with all of it's rocks. This fact made performing hard tricks like a mc'nasty or phoenix monkey really difficult. Besides this, the foam was also in a bad condition, which made sticking your tricks extra hard. Gerd was out of luck when he tried a mc'nasty and lost his spot. In the end, he became 13th, but in contrast to him, Peter had some nice rides and got into the finals.

The women's category as well had some pretty talented paddlers at the start.
Every girl was trying her best during the three runs of which only the top result counted. During my first two rides, I scored massive 0 points so my last chance was the third run. Well, what can I say? I did pretty good and even won the first Euro Cup of the year! Jutta Kaiser from Germany became second and Maria Lindgren from Sweden third. The men's final was also very exciting. Peter almost had some perfect rides and claimed the gold medal for himself, while the Germans Seppi Strohmeier got silver and Thomas Hinkel bronze.

Our friend Markus made the German team by winning the C1 class and therefore cashed in his ticket for Thun. After a pretty successful weekend, we packed our stuff and went back home where we currently are preparing for the next Euro Cup. It will be held in our home spot Cunovo. I hope to see you there!
Until then, check out the pictures we've made.

Nina