John Gregory @gregiej | London | Sportscene -  Thrilling start to the final Great Britain canoe slalom team selection trials. Today’s race 3 sets us up for a nail-biting culmination tomorrow (Sunday April 28th) on the Olympic Lee Valley White Water Centre. More than 1000 tickets were sold for this selection race demonstrating the importance of location, location, location in drawing in members of the public to see the very best that Great Britain canoe slalom has to offer.

Coming into today’s 3rd race leaders after the first two selection races were: Mallory Franklin (C1W), David Florence (C1M), Joe Clarke (K1M), Fiona Pennie (K1W) and Olympic champions Baillie/Stott (C2)

John Anderson GB Performance Director commented on today’s event; I am incredibly impressed by a larger number of athletes with committed paddling on the Olympic course, which with the blowing of the poles added additional challenging conditions for the paddlers”. He added that; “Tomorrow’s final GB canoe slalom selection will be very tight especially in the K1M event which after the three selection races remains very open”.

C1M
2012 World Number 1, David Florence set an impressive 1st run time in his C1 class posting a 97.15 second, which included an early touch on the course. He was unable to improve in his second run and takes two wins and a second from the first two races thus securing himself top spot in C1 for the team selection.

C1W
Mallory Franklin from Windsor & District Canoe Club ranked UK number 2 at the end of the 2012 season pulled out an astonishing second run despite a touch and 2 second penalty on gate 1. After the race Mallory commentated that this had caused her to focus her mind on the tricky gate 13. She ran into no further problems and finished the day with three wins from the first three selection races

K1M
Mikey Wilson ranked 9th in the UK at the end of 2012 from Stafford & Stone Canoe Club set the fastest run of the day with a 89.80 second clean first run and the only competitor to go under 90 seconds. Etienne Stott in his tweet said “stand out performance of the day was Mikey Wilson with the big run to win the men’s kayak”.

K1W
Lizzie Neave (2012 Olympian) had a comfortable lead at the end of first runs. Fiona Pennie put in a wonderfully executed 2nd run in a brand new boat to take the 3rd race win and with a win from the second selection event two weeks ago in Nottingham currently leads on points. It is a comfortable position for Pennie and a reversal of fortunes from 2012 Olympic selection.

C2
First it needs to be noted that both Olympic C2 medallist crews of Baillie/Stott and Florence/ Hounslow are preselected for the 2013 GB Canoeing team on account of their Olympic results and so they are removed from the calculation of the C2 selection events. In first runs, Davies & Lister keep Baillie & Stott down in second. As Baillie & Stott sat in the start pool for their 2nd run they found themselves in 4th place behind, Rhys/Lister, Burgess/Pitt and Tatchell/Quinn. In true Olympic style Tim & Etienne pulled off a commanding 101.84 clear run to win the race.

Both selection race organiser, Peter Curry and John Anderson praised the more than 100 volunteers who have ensured today’s event went without a hitch and proceeded according to plan. The number of volunteers in fact exceeded the 69 paddlers involved in the selection race. They both appreciated the officials who were exposed to cold windy conditions for long period of time out along the course.

Today’s race 3 format consisted of 2 runs the best of which counted where at this level the competitors get no chance to practice on this exact set of gates. Despite the extensive development [£6.4 million] work underway around the Lee Valley site the course delivered with a tough 20 gate course designed by Neil Buckley and Sydney Olympic medallist, Paul Ratcliffe. It presented many options to the paddlers in the form of safer spins or faster but riskier direct route; however of the 50 seconds for missing a gate almost all were on the offset downstream gate 13. Unlucky for some clearly!

So after 3 selection races the first, second, third in each class based on my analysis are;

You may note that none of the paddlers leading their respective category changed as a result of selection race 3, proving that race consistency is key.

The GB Canoeing canoe slalom 2013 selection trials final race 4 follows the heat, semi and final format.  According to today’s winner Fiona Pennie we are expecting a tighter course tomorrow. Having inspected it there are two double upstreams and a tricky split downstream in the eddy at gate 12, which has been designed by GB Performance coaches Mark Delaney and Ian Raspin

Here is a table of unofficial results from race 3 by class (total time includes penalties).

I am excited already and keen to be back watching at Lee Valley for the final selection race of 2013. Live results are available at www.canoeliveresults.com Look for GBR Team Trials.