Lowri Davies

The first weekend of December saw my brother and I driving 4 hours AWAY from a rain soaked Wales (where the rivers were up for the first time in weeks) to play on the most famous weir on the Thames, Hurley. We questioned our sanity too! But Jon was keen to pit his skills against those who? would be competing in the following week’s GB Team Selection and I had agreed to be there before the rain really hit. Besides, I’d not been proper playboating in ages.

The event was poorly advertised with details being put mainly on a website I didn’t even know existed (tvfreestylers.co.uk), only to result in the event being reduced to? Sunday? only? due to a lack of preregistering entrants. To my knowledge, they didn’t ask for people to preregister. Despite this, 60 competitors ranging from Hurley newbies to local heroes took to the water for a laid back “jam style” event.

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The? event was billed as a novice friendly, fun event, which it certainly was on the water. The ten people in each heat generally cheered eachother on and chatted in the eddy in a way you’d never see with the traditional 2 x 45 second run set-up. I enjoyed my heat a lot and using a different scoring system was a novelty though I doubt its effectiveness. Timekeeping was hit-and-miss, heats lengths? varied, judges swapped about and those of the same category were not on the water at the same time making it unlikely that judging was consistent and fair. But all of that was unimportant because people were having fun!

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I felt that the fun attitude and newbie friendliness of the event was not represented or summarised in any way by the prize giving, which mentioned and rewarded and only those that had scored highest in each class. Instead the day was best summarized for me by? Andy Ing, a Master who until that day had never managed to cross the radial into gate 2. The Flowfree team (my brother and I) had given him? some caoching? and were on the bridge to offer support during his heat. After a couple of failed attempts Andy made it into gate 2; woops and hollas? roared from the bridge as a huge grin? spread across? his face. At the end of the day Andy thanked me for the tips, but more importantly for the support we’d? given him? while he was on the water.? The grin on his face? was still ear-to-ear. Knowing I’d helped somebody to get that rush from achieving something new made me smile as much as Andy himself. That should be what these events are all about.

There were many promises made about next year’s event being bigger and better, but as far as I’m concerned, if they reward those who really give it their all, do something new (like their first time to Hurley, first front surf or flat spin) or do something fun to entertain the crowd rather than rewarding the same old UK Freestyle heroes, they will have a fantastic event which really promotes freestyle without it being “another serious competition”.