Nick Harding | @nickhdg | Sportscene - ICF Canoe Slalom Chair Jean-Michel Prono looks back at the brilliant weekend of racing at Cardiff and looks on to Prague.

Sparing a few minutes from his busy schedule, Sportscene caught up with Jean-Michel outside the media centre at midday-ish on Day 3 of World Cup 1, Cardiff.

Jean-Michel competed for France in K1M slalom from 1974-1975, as a coach he trained 2 World Champions who won 2 Olympic bronzes and silver at Sydney 2000. He became National Technical Adivisor for the French Canoe Kayak Federation in 2000 and then became Canoe Slalom Technical Operations Manager for the Athens Olympics in 2004.

Despite a few technical hiccups, gusty wind and bouts of rain, overall the Cardiff weekend was top-notch; Jean-Michel was very pleased with how the event was planned and managed:

“The organisation here has even succeeded in improving upon the quality delivered last year. The team knows slalom well, the collective commitment of the town hall and the Welsh Ministry of Sport; I think that we should be able to return here for competition [in future seasons].”

Pumps cause delay

The water at Cardiff is hoisted up 13ft (3.9m) from the River Ely below.

During the C1M final, the pumps that feed the whitewater course went off and the water pressure subsided forcing last-to-go-down Matej Benus (SVK) and David Florence (GBR) to wait for 20-30minutes – Benus still went onto take Silver and Florence ended up in 5th.

Jean-Michel assured that this problem had not been encountered at Cardiff before and that engineers would work to isolate its source.

He explained that the water level is controlled by censors above and below the pump system, one of these censors went into a state of security or 'automatic shut-down'. The delay was caused by having to restart the system.

Artificial courses are dependent on their pumps, Lee Valley has five of them on the Olympic run. The question is whether secondary generators and pumps should be added to courses to prevent future problems, like that at Cardiff, from occurring or is this an unjustifiable, additional expense?

Prague

Ahead of the scheduled World Championship in Prague, Jean-Michel was very positive about the progress being made to clear up the Troja slalom course after heavy flooding ravaged the area not so long ago.

The Czech Canoe Federation, the Czech Slalom Committee, Czech athletes, local volunteers including children have been working tirelessly to bring the course back up to competition standard. With such enthusiasm and togetherness they have been cleaning buildings, the course itself, putting the gate system back in place and replacing stadium seats.

When asked whether the World Championship would go ahead in Prague in September, Jean-Michel was adamant that it would:

“It would be hard to take the Championship away from them [the Czechs] after suffering a natural disaster. Technically there is no reason not to hold the competition there, we've had good news so far.”

Jean-Michel has been receiving weekly photos and updates from the Prague camp, progress looks good. Fingers-crossed they won't have be used but contingency plans are in place as a last resort - no locations were mentioned.

Links

Facebook Gallery with all Cardiff photos.

Audio Gallery with all Cardiff interviews.