This morning the teams practiced the sprint and head to head (H2H). They will have a second round of practice this afternoon. Most teams are handling the course well and making the necessary moves to get through the rapids upright. We have seen a few flips and some swims but the professional safety team made sure all swimmers were okay.

The second race of the Teva Youth World Championships was the head to head race. Two teams battling it out with the winner advancing the next round. The men’s quarter-finals saw The Czech Republic beat Slovenia, Netherlands beat Great Britain, Russia beat Germany and Turkey beat the Czech Republic mixed team. In the Semi-finals Czech Republic advanced to the final defeating the Netherlands and as did Russia crossing the line in front of Turkey.

The men’s youth final was a great race with Russia taking full advantage of their lane choice. However the Czech Republic put up a great fight and although they never managed to bump or push the Russians out of the way they gave it their all till they got caught on top of the courses biggest drop the mother. After being held up for a few seconds Russia pulled ahead, never looked back and won the race.

The women’s race saw the Netherlands move to the final after beating Venezuela and Germany beat Russia to advance. The final race saw the Netherlands take control from the get go and win gold for the home team. The team consists of Nina the team captain and Karin from The Hague plus Anke and Krysia who are from the CIOS sports and education school. CIOS is supporting the Teva World Rafting Championship with over 50 volunteers.

Today’s race went well and the organizing team from Dutch Water Dreams and the Dutch Rafting Federation did a great job. The only downfall is that there was an unfair, and too big an advantage for the team who had lane choice as the left bank starting position pulled rafts upstream in an eddy and angled the raft making it virtually impossible to ever win from that lane unless you had a lucky surge in the current, the wind blew in your favor and you had a great deal of luck and the opposing team messed up the run. Only Czech Republic got lucky and passed Netherlands when they landed on an island in the course.

The inaction of the IRF judges to change the start for the women’s and second round of the men put a damper on the race as the outcome was almost 100% set and took all the real action and impact of a sprint away from the teams, spectators and sponsors. The fact that judges are willing to take no action to correct a blatant problem is irresponsible and should not happen. I hope the IRF looks at this inaction and takes some real action to ensure that all future events have the judges in place to make decisions that will ensure the fairest and best race possible for the athletes that train so hard striving for the gold.

Tomorrow the 14th will see the youth teams compete in the slalom and while the adult teams get to practice the slalom course.