David Bain | Sportscene - This years Gene17 Val Sesia river festival was again a huge success with lots of paddlers coming from all over Europe to compete in the Individual, Team and Sweet Rumble races! This year the levels rose rapidly prior to the event starting due to a huge storm coming down in the area bringing with it lots of snow melt.

The race format changed slightly bringing the Alpine sprint race down stream from the Boater X ramp to the bottom of the camp site which provided a great class 3 race with lots of cool moves and lines to make if you wished to make it in to the top ten! The team race took place on the same section with the added challenge of hitting the Pyranha Burn, which was hanging from the bridge in Campertogno.

The Sweet rumble was held on the normal section but with the higher water levels. This made some really exciting racing throughout the heats.
Daniel Klotzner took the win in the individual race while David Bain took the Sweet Rumble Belt in the boater x.

This event is always about more than competition and this year provided a huge variety of paddling in the area with low water runs in perfect flow at the beginning of the week, and some of the more juicy steep and big volume runs coming in at the end of the week.