Val Sesia, June 3rd 2012. After a nice week of good weather and medium water all the paddlers arrived here in Val Sesia enjoying the two events running at the same time during the week-end.
Finally the spring has started here in Italy and almost all creeks are running with a nice medium flow. I arrived in Campertogno on Tuesday to enjoy the spring and the Italian sun in the river. Like me a lot of paddlers from England, New Zealand, Spain, Austria, Czech Republic, Ireland and Holland, have enjoyed classic rivers in Val Sesia like Egua, Sorba, Sermenza and the multitude of Sesia stretches. This place offers a lot of class III to V runs within 40 min driving from the campsite of the Gatto e la Volpe in Campertogno. During the weekend two events have been organized from different people in the same place here in Campertogno. Val Sesia River Festival organized by Gene17 mainly sponsored by GravitàZero and Piranha and the third race of the EXO kayak tour 2012 sponsored by this new Italian kayak brand. Both events had guided tours, races and parties. It is hard to understand why the organizers couldn't find a way to choose different weekends. Probably it has just been a coincidence and there weren't other choices but rumors say that it has been a studied commercial battle to steal visibility from the kayak world. I personally hope the first reason is the main one because it would be quite sad to try to split the kayakers for commercial purposes.
I love racing and I decided to do all the races of both events. The main race of the Val Sesia River Festival was the Alpin Sprint from Curgo to Mollia. Back in the days this race was one of the most famous events in Italy for the beauty of this 10 minutes class IV run. A very long and fun run to do at full speed. Here the results:
- Michele Ramazza, ITA 10'36''
- Daniel Klotzner, ITA 10'41''
- Thomas Waldner, ITA 10'42''
The main event of the EXO races was the slalom on Sunday on the Sorba slides with the best 15 competitors qualified in the sprint in Campertogno. Here the results:
- Daniel Klotzner, ITA
- Michele Ramazza, ITA
- Thomas Waldner, ITA
A good thing from the organizers has been the Sweet Rumble boaterX shared by the two events. The top 32 paddlers from both main events raced together in the nice course just above the event's camp, overtaking each other to win the famous Sweet belt. This time Filippo Brunetti, ITA, managed to win the belt despite the slow start in the final heat.
However kayakers enjoyed the multitude of opportunities offered by both events and everybody had fun here in Val Sesia. Lot of people are now moving to Val Chiusella for the Eporedia Active Days that is going to take place from June 7th to Sunday 10th.
