Deon J Breytenbach | Sportscene - Freestyle in South Africa is rather small but over the last 3-4 years has started growing again nicely and we are seeing more and more paddlers at the various events. Our two main events are the Ocean Champs in Durban and the National Championship on the Vaal River in Parys which is home to SA’s biggest park and play spot the Gatsien wave. Once a year paddlers from all over the country converge on the little town of Parys for the only guaranteed water day of the year and squeeze as much fun as is possible into 1 weekend.

Saturday [2 November] is just for fun seeing as most of the main flow only arrives at the wave on Sunday morning. So there is some practice rides happening in the shute (the low water spot just upstream of the true Gatsien wave), bouldering competitions at the Dome climbing gym, and kayak polo in the late afternoon at the Likkewaan canoe club. All sessions are open to anyone keen on joining in and friends are quickly made. Sunday is competition day, the wave starts to come in from 07h00 in the morning so the eddy starts filling up early with paddlers, everybody wants a bit of last minute fine tuning and also to get the hang of the wave as it has different sweet spots on different levels. We are never sure what the level will end up peaking at. All we know is that there will be enough water for the wave to work. We also run things a bit differently here in SA; we have categories for Beginner, Intermediate and Expert all of these are split into Junior and Male/Female groups the juniors paddle in the same heats as the open paddlers to help them with their rides and to keep the senior paddlers on their toes. Scoring on the ICF standards only happens for the Experts, the beginner groups are scored on a crowd system, so they have their rides and then the crowd scores them out of 10 for each ride this does make the scoring very inconsistent but a lot of fun for everybody it is also a lot less nerve wracking for the competitors. Intermediates are scored similar to the ICF scoring but not as strict, this is to encourage the up and coming paddlers to try bigger tricks even if they aren’t perfect yet. For the Expert groups scoring is on the ICF standards.

Over the last 3 years the freestyle attendance has been growing consistently in all groups and this year we had a record number of paddlers especially in the female group which is brilliant to see. The beginner groups start of first points are made up by the crowd for getting onto the wave (it has a bit of a sneaky seam) and anything else they do from old school moves like the Shudder Rudder aka Shark, Hellispin and how big the inevitable Window Shade is, extra points are given if the paddler flushes and makes their roll. This year the title was taken by Monre Barnard who Sharkied the hell out of the wave and even got some spins in, 2nd place was a tie between youngster Dewiko Loots (the youngest junior at this years event who took the beginner junior title) and Michael Hall who both managed some excellent surfs, shuvits and rolls, 3rd place went to Ronald Mckechnie for his total commitment to the upstream blade window shade. The beginner ladies title went to Jolene Fisher who stomped the rest of the competition with spins/shuvits and consistent rolling in the boils, 2nd was Aimee-Leigh Claasens who is 3 months pregnant and competed in her first ever Freestyle event 3rd was Helena Pienaar also a 1st time freestyler, she is a familiar face at all our paddling events but normally she is behind her camera lens capturing the action with her amazing photographic skills. The intermediate class was one of the toughest fields we have had in a while and great to watch as they pushed themselves harder and faster in each round in the charge for the top spot. Divan Barnard took 3rd John Vogts 2nd and a very well deserved 1st went to Vincent Venter who discovered he is a cart wheeling machine and found the looping button on his kayak. By midday with the flows at their peak for the competition it was the Expert Ladies who put on a great show. Local paddler and defending champ Tammy Muir threw down hard working her way around the feature but had some unfortunate flushes and in the end got pipped by Inke Kruger who made a big return to the local competitive paddling scene after a couple of years taking some time for her youngsters and travels.

Last on the wave were the expert men, we had a rather packed group with the best freestylers around all trying to take the top spot. All of us are good friends and paddle together often which helps to keep things fun and friendly in the eddy. I was the defending champion after taking the title 2 years in a row I was hoping to make it a hat-trick and everybody else was keen to knock me off the top. My rides didn’t go quite as planned and after our heat I was very concerned about possibly not even making the top 5 final. Luckily my scores were a bit better than I thought so I scraped into the finals in 4th place which was a huge relief for me. After a short break we were back in the eddy and I think most of us were rather relieved just too actually make the finals as none of us had perfect rides. Sitting in the eddy watching the other rides and checking out the crowd I suddenly realised that I was breaking my own rules by taking things to serious and not focusing on having fun which is after all why I kayak. Realising this I gave myself a mental slap and paddled onto the wave and just had fun out there. This turned out to be a good idea, finals was super fun none of us had perfect rides but we smiled and laughed all the way through. Luke Longridge took 3rd place with 335, I came in 2nd with 420 and Parys local Philip Claasens after several years of making the finals every time but never the top spot had the most consistent rides and took a well deserved 1st place with a score of 440. The top junior expert (his first year in the expert class) was Jonatan Pienaar who only missed the finals by 10 points will be one to watch in the future.

Overall it was a brilliant Championship weekend with loads of new faces in the eddy and on the side. Freestyle might be small in South Africa but it is growing fast and the biggest reason for this is that we all share the same mentality of keeping it fun.

A very big thank you to all the event organisers and sponsors for making it happen especially Sunwa River Lodge, REAL Adventures, Whitewater Training and Fluid Kayaks.