On 12th of March over 400 paddlers descended on Nottingham for the 2005 National Student Rodeo - the UK's premier student event. With more than 300 entrants the Student Rodeo has become the biggest freestyle event held in the UK, this year drawing competitors in from England, Scotland, Wales and even back from Germany!
One of the main reasons for the popularity is the general ethos of the weekend - to get people involved, and having fun, in freestyle kayaking.
The number of competitors around was always going to prove a challenge to give all a chance, but the extreme slalom got away early with competitors having to try their hands at different aspects of kayaking from spins and loops on top wave to old skool on twin wave via the ever challenging hanging ball.
This ranked everyone into the respective categories: Novice, Intermediate and Expert for the men and Novice and Expert for the ladies.
As the extreme slalom finished off Ben White from Pyranha took a squirt coaching session before he judged the event - something which had an obvious effect on the quality of the paddling. Cartwheels and full mystery moves were the order of the day in the looping pool.
This trialled the new system of heats, giving the competitors a free-for-all within a time limit to encourage people to try a bigger move with no worries about getting washed off and being knocked out. Dicky Chrimes scored his first of many points of the weekend taking gold, pushing Ben Selles from Bristol Uni and Adam Dumolo from Leeds into second and third.
After the success of this it was decided to continue with the same format for the main heats starting with Men's novice on twin wave and Ladies novice on the top wave. The new format gave these events much better spectator value and the crowds gathered to cheer them on. The safety team put in a great effort getting almost every swimmer and kit out before the next events.
C1'ers then put themselves onto the top wave for some impressive action, and some K1 paddlers trying their hand and being not so impressive but having a good go anyway…
The ladies experts and men's intermediate / experts were held in the muncher, using the same rules to allow anyone to have a go and get points.
With all the competitors to get through the paddling went on until dark, with the last of the heats being under floodlights. Then everyone packed off to the campsite and the bar, for a night of fun in bad taste theme. An awesome night - organised by the ever enthusiastic River Legacy people - followed, despite the awful clothes on display.
The Desperate Measures tent was even more popular than normal the next morning, with tea, coffee and cake provided by Boulder Adventures getting people over the night before and onto the course for the Topo Duo races. Competition was fierce, with 4 duo's per heat racing the length of the course making one compulsory 360 turn (in any direction) during that time. The winners went through to the final, held in the looping pool with competitors getting massive pop-outs and the ever family friendly naked paddlers pulled plenty of 'cheeky' crowd pleasing moves! High and Mighty, the kayak distributors, were around and have put together a nice little video of the Duo finals - see the website for it!
The ladies novice finals ended up with Jackie Gillespie fighting it out with last year's organiser, Kirsty Archibald on top wave - Jackie eventually getting top points for Southampton after both resorted to getting out and standing up in their boats while surfing top wave!
Men's novice, held on the twin wave, proved tough to judge between the men and the boys. Lots of old school moves were pulled and Matthew Bell pulled away to get first and win himself a pair of custom made Double Dutch freestyle paddles.
The action then headed back to the top wave for the C1 final and with a couple of paddlers having to pull out due to injury the field was wide open. Tim Burne from Imperial College came through as the top in the class, with Dickie Chrimes picking up yet more points in second place.
Men's intermediates were the first real testing grounds of the new freestyle rules, allowing each move to be scored only once and allowing some points to be scored for moves which result in being flushed off the wave. Designed to move away from the 'flurry of ends' that so often feature in high class playboating and towards a more interesting ride, everyone was eager to see whether they worked. From the huge numbers in the finals, the judges whittled away through quarter's, semi's and finals to finish with Scott Jenkins taking a pair of Robson Pogo's from Des Mes and Robson as first prize.
The last events of the weekend were the expert finals. Ladies were up first and last years winner Rosie Cripps, now ranked 7th in the world, was up to defend her title. A long fight with Lowri Davies resulted in Rosie keeping her title and Jenny Hamilton-Ible coming in a respectable third.
Men's expert finals saw some of the best paddling from the weekend. Competition was fierce coming into the last 5, with the paddlers having to pull out their best moves to stay in.
Will Clark was first to go, just being edged out of 4th place by Tim Coles of Bangor. Adam Devitt-Spooner took third, once again leaving James Barnes and Dickie Chrimes to battle it out for first place. Despite a valiant effort from James, Dickie put in a blinding final run to reclaim first, repeating last years result.
Many people put in a lot of effort to make the event run - the safety crew did an awesome job keeping everyone warm: many thanks to Martin, Carrick, Sarah, Owen and all who lent a hand. The event wouldn't have been possible without them.
As always the judges did all that was asked with the minimum of whingeing - despite having to sit out in the cold. Many thanks to Ollie Castle, Dan Heyworth, Jamie Burbeck, Claire O'Hara, Morsey, Will Clark and Matt Deaves.
The sponsors all came up with some amazing prizes. Desperate Measures awarded Tim Coles a sponsorship deal, joining Rosie on Team Des Mes.
Loughborough narrowly clinched the Student Rodeo cup, and also got a brand new I4 from Pyranha to add to their club fleet, while Boulder provided prizes for the second and third place uni's - Leeds and Nottingham Trent.
See www.nationalstudentrodeo.org.uk for full results, pictures and videos.
Many thanks, and we hope to see you in 2006!
Tim Stevenson and all at Leeds Uni
