How the extreme kayaking races are going this year in Europe? The main 5 events in Europe are getting bigger and bigger and have been put together by the EKEC, the European Circuit. Pyrenees Buddies Race, Outdoormix, King of the Alps, EkstremeSportVeko and Devils Race. In this articles you will find a report of the Outdoormix 2017.
Competitors
The main competitors are more or less the same, Eric Deguile, Michele Ramazza, Michal Buchtel, Daniel Klotzner and many other. However this year an outsider showed his skills and power winning the Outdoormix in France. This guy is Gregor Becke directly from the kayak slalom olympic games in Barcellona 1992. Despite the time difference was small and the first places where very tight, he got the the first place in the sprint and BoaterX.
I personally found a good physical shape this year and I manage to perform well in all races always in the podium.
Results
The overall result of the Outdoormix has been
- Gregor Becke
- Eric Deguile
- Michele Ramazza
The races
This year the event was made from 4 races of the main disciplines of freeride kayaking: Extreme Slalom, BoaterX, Sprint and long distance. The overall result has been the sum of all races. All races has been hard even if the water level was not high.
This year we had few problems in the Extreme slalom since the rules are not really clear and well tested. The problem has been about the penalities: the touch was supposed to not count, but at the end of the race, in some gate a touch where the stick was moving apparently to much has been counted as 50 sec penalty. Probably the rule: it's ok to touch but not too much... is not really working since it has no objective definition.
I think in extreme slalom we should either follow the classic slalom rules: "touch 2 sec e missed gate or (intentionally opened gate when you are offline) 50 sec" or go for the "touch allowed and missed gate or (intentionally opened gate when you are offline) 50sec". I personally like the idea of free touches since our boats are bigger than slalom boat and could touch gates easly.
photo by: Outdoormix Festival, Damiano di Benedetto