Under 23 Development Trip Report: Europe 2005
By Davey Hearn with Jennifer Hearn contributing
Click on the blue highlighted words to access photos etc. online
Our U23 trip kicked off in Augsburg, Bavaria, Germany on the afternoon of Tuesday, July 12. Junior Team Members Ashley Nee, John Gerstenberger, and Nick Lomas had just wrapped up the three-week Junior Team trip culminating in competition at the Junior Pre-Worlds in Solkan, Slovenia. Rick Powell had also competed there as part of a two week junior development trip led by Joe Jacobi. Erik Amason came to Augsburg from the World Cup in Athens, Greece where he had competed with the US National Team the previous weekend. Jim Wade had been training in France at Bourg St. Maurice and was to join our group in four days time.
The U23 trip was made possible by USACK Development funding, and was staffed by Coach Davey Hearn, along with team assistant Jennifer Hearn, Davey’s spouse, both also serving as leaders, drivers, and logistics coordinators.. Jesse Hearn was along and enjoyed playing in the mud and sand along the river banks, and took advantage of new video games available on athlete iPods and calculators.
We picked up our second vehicle, a gunmetal gray Opel Vectra Wagon, at the Munich airport Thrifty outlet that Tuesday morning. It was found to be slow initially but turbo-quick once moving, roomy, and spare in use of its diesel fuel of choice. Turbo, as she came to be known, augmented our first vehicle, the silver Peugeot Partner XT, who also sipped diesel sparingly and had proven herself already over three weeks of Junior Team travels across Germany, Austria, and Slovenia. Dubbed Chrome Toolbox by the Junior Team radio net, she was now usually captained by Jennifer, while Turbo commonly found herself with Davey at the wheel. The new vehicle came with a surprise: she spoke German from a GPS unit which was a novel toy for most of the time in Augsburg until it proved its worth in finding our elusive downtown goal, the rental car office where Jim Wade had to return his car before we could depart for Prague.
Our vehicles sported a red ribbon with gold stars flying from each antenna for easy ID while parked and when out and about on the road, as many vehicles looked like ours from a distance. Since we stored our boats at the race courses, there were no obvious clues as to which car was ours without boats on top. We talked between vehicles with Motorola radios, which helped immeasurably to keep us in synch.
We brought custom minicell foam racks for both vehicles which worked great (except when it rained hard) just like on past trips. Boats were strapped tight around the top and through the front and back door openings. When it rained hard, the webbing wicked water right into the vehicle. This wasn’t to be a major problem, but when we arrived in Friedberg after Jr. Pre-Worlds in the wee hours of the morning we should have taken the straps off, as it rained heavily and we came out after dawn to find standing water under the wet front seats of the Chrome Toolbox. It was nothing a few hours of drying with open doors and windows in the hot Bavarian sun wouldn’t cure.
We coordinated with National Team Coach Cathy Hearn to avoid interference with National Team training and support the Augsburg World Cup Team as best we could. Cathy worked with us to devise a training plan for the three weeks of the trip. This required some creativity for World Cup week as the race course was booked up from 8 am to 6 pm daily with training slots for the nation groups. Our plans called for extensive use of the multiple moving water channels at this amazing whitewater training center, including the top of the 1972 Olympic Slalom course, no longer used for racing now that the slalom courses are shorter.
We roomed at the Gasthof Zur Linde in Friedberg, which had accommodated well our Junior Team group for the first week of that trip. This historic (13th century) little town on a hill was a nice getaway from the course, with places to eat dinner, buy gelato, baked goods, groceries, and other sundries. A few athletes borrowed or rented bikes to ride the 3 ½ miles to practices at the race course. We followed the Tour de France on German TV a bit while staying here, and found ourselves inspired (like so many others) from watching Lance Armstrong battling for the maillot jaune and finishing second in Tuesday’s stage to take the yellow jersey, and from the German commentators talking animatedly about the days events in the Tour.
We often rose quite early to take advantage of the open water time on the race course from dawn until 8 am. Local bakeries opened at 6 am sharp along the cobblestone main street for a quick breakfast possibility to prime the athletes systems. At times we left before the bakeries opened, so as to have the Eiskanal course to ourselves for a good hour and a half before the first hordes started to arrive to warm up for the nation training slots. One morning we arrived early thinking we had to be the first ones out there, but, lo and behold, we saw Coach Mark Delaney with the Brits just finishing up their session.
Breakfast at the Zur Linde didn’t start until around 7 am, so we were able to enjoy a second breakfast here on the days we trained early in the morning, at 8:30 or so. Semmel rolls were the standard fare here, along with orange juice and fancy meats and cheeses. Favorite toppings for the semmels were Nutella single serving packs (which were subject to shortages and hoarding activity) and a butter/honey mixture, handmade by the athletes at the table.
Lunch was often found at the grocery store or at the favorite Doner Kebab fast food restaurant on the second floor of the Schwaben Center. These homemade pitas stuffed with spicy meat and vegetables and yogurt sauce were tasty and very filling, similar what we know as Gyros. The internet center was just down the hall here, popular for getting email and updating the folks at home as well as making very cheap phone calls from the booths there. We learned how to return our empty bottles for credit slips at the grocery store here, as almost all the bottles, glass or plastic, carry a deposit fee.
Our workout that first afternoon was on the Jugendstrecke, or Youth course, just below and river left of the starting point of the race course, and consisted of timed short courses. A few athletes ventured onto the race course for recon after the numbers thinned out at the end of the day.
Quarter sections and halves were on the agenda for the next two mornings, and we worked our sessions from 6 to 8 am each day. Afternoons found us one day doing 3 minute loops at the Gelbhausstrecke aka Waldstrecke or Woods course, on the long back canal in the forest below the gold waterworks house, and another day a Tour de Eiskanal session of Giant loops down the top of the Olympic course through the Jugendstrecke and down the BLZ Strecke all the way to the Y and up the Waldstrecke to a short carry up to the Babystrecke behind the Schwaben club and back to the start to do it all over again.
Cathy suggested we have our U23 athletes follow the activities of an athlete or two of their choice on the World Cup race days. This assignment proved to be quite interesting, as each athlete was asked to choose someone in their boat class and unobtrusively observe what they did and how they approached the challenge of World Cup race day, from warmup to what they did between runs and their racing as well.
On a rest day from training for our U23 athletes, Davey worked doing splits at the bottom of the course for the US Team all day during the long Friday qualifier for all classes. On Saturday Davey did video and some splits for the US Team for the K1 semi and final. Sunday found Davey taking splits and some video for the US Team at the top of the course for the K1W and C1 semi and final.
Jennifer helped with splits at the top of the course, photographed the races all three days, and posted updates, photos and results to daveyhearn.com from the press center.
Our workouts for the U23 group on Saturday were a full length race simulation of two runs with splits and video on the top of the venerable Olympic course (Oberer Eiskanal) before the race started, and power shorts on the Jugendstrecke after the race was completed. We finished the pm session in time to catch the TV broadcast of the days K1 racing on ARD BR III German television back at the hotel in Friedberg.
Sunday we revisited the top of the ’72 Olympic course for another crack at this challenging piece of water for add-ons, a workout with one run each on the top 1/3, bottom 2/3, top 2/3, and bottom 1/3 of the course, followed by one full length run, all with splits and video. Jim Wade had arrived the evening before so this was his first session with the U23 group on this trip.
The past five days had been a time for a bit of rest and recuperation from Junior Pre-Worlds for some, and a chance for our group to assemble and begin to work together on serious slalom progress, while seeing some of the best slalomists in the world tackle one of the best known race courses on the oldest man-made course in the world.
On to Praha
We departed for Prague Sunday afternoon after the World Cup event was complete, and the GPS mapping system expedited our exit from Augsburg via downtown twists and turns. We arrived just before sunset 4 hours later to catch a glimpse of the new slalom course in downtown Prague as we crossed the Vltava River en route to Troja and check-in at the Hotel Libuse.
Although we unloaded all of our luggage from inside the cars, we were late to decipher the important fact that we had needed to park our boat-laden cars inside the secure parking area by the police station around the corner rather than on the street outside the hotel. Fortunately, the receptionist patiently allowed (even insisted) that we unload our boats and store them inside the hotel courtyard overnight rather than risk having them stolen. We were now in the Czech Republic, and our German-speaking skills would be an ally but we had to have much patience with misunderstandings on this new linguistic playing field where things were not so easy to communicate.
We did recon Monday on the Troja course where the World Championships will be held next year in early August, and video study of the add-ons in Augsburg was accomplished after some endurance work. We signed up for time slots on the course and arranged to pay a nominal fee per boat for each session.
Broken runs on 1/5 sections and a technique session comprised Tuesday’s sessions, and a full length course workout followed by endurance in the afternoon were accomplished Wednesday. For the latter workout some of the paddlers followed the Vltava upstream all the way to the new course downtown, surfing on some barge wakes at times. They found the new course to be excellent, as good as the Troja course. The return would be too far by boat, so they decided to ride back on one of the trams that crisscross the city. This would have been no problem, except that they got on the streetcar with their boats. After they got on, the driver said something unintelligible in Czech over the loudspeaker, and the guys just looked at each other and didn’t move. Then the driver got off the tram and walked back and yelled something at them, and they all took off with their boats, forced to make the long walk back to the club without the benefit of public transportation.
These trams in Prague made for excellent sightseeing opportunities when we had a moment of free time, which wasn’t very often.
Thursday we did technique on problem areas of the course, with power shorts in the afternoon.
Race At Roudnice
Friday morning, Davey drove Jim, Nick, and Ashley to Roudnice, 30 minutes drive to the north, for practice on the whitewater course there. We had heard about a small competition there on the weekend and they wanted to get in another race. After discussion with the group about it two days earlier, we had decided to offer the opportunity to those that wanted it, and support those who wanted to stick with the original plan as well. Friday was our chance to get in some practice on the Roudnice course before the race. Jennifer remained with John, Erik, and Rick, who stayed at Troja to do endurance loops per the original schedule.
We had rest scheduled for Friday pm and Saturday am, which worked well for these three athletes who passed on the Roudnice race. Jennifer drove them over to watch the race a bit on Saturday, and they left early to get back for some recon technique on the Troja course.
Davey took Ashley, Jim, and Nick along with Canadian junior Paul Manning-Hunter to the race site Saturday morning, arriving just in time for the demo runs and to pay the entry fees and bib deposits for our athletes and collect their bibs. This race was described to us as a small club race, but there were 81 K1 men and a total of almost 150 boats racing, with ten nations in attendance.
Nick was the first of our athletes to run, and he encountered problems towards the bottom of the course entering a tricky narrow eddy by the wall on the right, flipped, and washed down past several gates. Ashley and then Jim fared better, but none were satisfied with their results, and all felt they could do better at the Pre-Worlds with focused training in the coming days. Nick had a much better 2nd run, showing his tenacity, and Jim showed some nice stuff, especially on his second run, finishing 8th, but he had dropped uncharacteristically low approaching an upstream gate on the top part of the course and lost significant time there. A Russian K1 was the winner, and the young Czech K1s including Lubos Hilgert, who finished 2nd, were quite impressive and aggressive on the course.
More Training in Prague
We did fulls back at Troja the next day, for both the morning and evening sessions. Courses were set by the one athlete for each workout who was designated the “course king”. Erik ruled in the morning and Rick reigned at the second session in this duty. (Jim had presided in this capacity for our fulls the previous Wednesday.) During these sessions we began to see the results of our work here so far with greater success and consistency.
The Pre-Worlds venue was a noisy construction site during our first week of practice there with a long trench being excavated for new wiring all along the race course up to the new club house construction. Early in the second week of practice it looked like they would run out of time to finish this project before the race, yet suddenly the trench was filled in, piles of extra dirt and rocks removed from the parking area, people-tall weeds were hand cut, sidewalk pavers were re-set in place by hand , and the venue was completely dressed up for the event with TV stands, banners, some new bleachers added to the existing spectator stands, tents, concession stands, and a huge inflatable Mattoni water bottle.
The rest of the Team USA contingent for this event arrived from the World Cup competition in La Seu d’Urgell, Spain on Monday, with Austin Crane pulling in around 9 am with Benn Fraker, Scott Mann, and Jamie Tidmore aboard after driving non-stop overnight from the World Cup in Spain. The rest of the Americans arrived later in the day, having stopped for some much needed rest along the way.
Coach Jiri Pultera, driving the Czech Team van and trailer, arrived a short time later, just off the same non-stop overnight drive from Spain, and this van was unhooked from the trailer full of slalom boats it had towed from Seu and then hooked up to another trailer loaded full of wildwater boats. Then the Czech wildwater team set off to the Junior Championships with not more than three quarters of an hour passing in between.
We trained in a Grand Prix workout just before midday Monday, and the athletes had a rest in the pm, with the exception of Jim, who did a lactic tolerance session.
Tuesday, we organized with the US World Cup Team to run a session of broken runs in quarters, and Davey did the timing on the 3rd quarter of the course for all US boats. Jennifer did video of the 2nd and 3rd quarters. Later this day we had a diversion watching a video clip on the laptop which Jim had brought along on his hard drive featuring a fellow named Ali G playing the easily confused TV reporter from Kazakhstan, among others. Jim graciously offered movies for the entertainment of all of us from this hard drive during our time in Prague.
On Wednesday we coordinated with the Spanish, Dutch, and Irish coaches (all of the other nations in our training slot: ESP, NED, IRL) to set a full length course. This cooperative effort between nations was very beneficial as everyone was doing the same moves in this mock race, and we could compare split and finish times with everyone on the water. Cathy did the finish times and Davey did halfway splits for all four nations athletes, while Dave Hepp did video.
Thursday had us out early from 7 to 8 am for short courses with a twist: Jim, John, and Rick made a course and did one run, which Davey recorded on video while the athletes watched one another. Then the athletes rated each other to agree on who did the best run. The next course was made by the one who did the best run, with the lowest placing athlete going first. We did 2 trips down the course on 5 sections this way, while Cathy worked the same session with Erik, Ashley, and Nick grouped together. An afternoon session was held with the athletes who did not do the morning session, while Ashley braved double workouts this day to paddle with Molly and Paris in the pm.
Friday was our last chance on the water before the race, and we were used to rising early by now, so we hit the course early to grab almost an hour of less busy water time before our nominal session started at 8 am with the nation slots. Germany’s large team had the same idea, though, so it actually got a bit emptier after our slot began at 8. This was a recon time for trying out special moves and doing what had worked in the past to build confidence. A second breakfast followed at the Libuse, consisting of hard boiled eggs, (opened by some athletes by blowing compressed air into one end and expelling the egg out of the shell), along with bread rolls, salami, cheese, yogurt, and cereal and milk along with orange juice and coffee. We returned to the course for a US Team meeting at 5 pm to talk over race day procedures, then watching demo runs at 6 pm.
Both cars were emptied of any personal gear when parked overnight to deter crime, and help keep these community spaces clean and ready for action each day. We carried extra bottles of water, a first aid kit, and a boat repair kit in the truck of the Chrome Toolbox. During the Pre-Worlds competition days the Chrome Toolbox also served as our athlete headquarters with a spare key left on the rear bumper of the car.
Pre-Worlds Racing
At the Pre-World Championships in Prague each nation could enter up to six boats in each class with separate age group categories for juniors and seniors. It seemed that our junior age U23 athletes would have a better opportunity of getting more racing experience, and qualifying for the semis/finals if they raced in their age grouping. They all agreed so we made sure they were entered in the junior class.
Jennifer helped by being a runner, getting food and drinks for team support staff, photographed the races , and posted updates, photos and results on daveyhearn.com.
We organized take-away bagged breakfast for our athletes who would be competing early and missing the 7:30 am breakfast at the hotel. These proved to be more helpful around lunch time as each bag had a yogurt, a juice, and lots of bread, meat, and cheese.
A technical drawback for the U23 athletes was that we did not have a team video camera along for our training sessions, as we had damage to two cameras which made them inoperable on the flight trip over with the Junior Team. Rich and Jim graciously lent their personal video cameras, but playback was limited to viewing on the camera screen as it would not play back properly on our laptop. Davey’s digital camera could record up to fifteen minutes of video footage that we did watch regularly on the laptop.
On the two race days, Davey helped the team support staff by taking splits and video for the U.S. Team, so everyone including the U23 athletes got their race runs filmed. Video of the U23 athletes was placed on separate tapes, and they were able to watch their runs on a separate playback unit so as not to interfere with the National Team athletes viewing their own runs in the nations’ video tent.
Race day Saturday started with Davey and Rick there early to walk the course, as Rick wore Bib #1 and was the first racer off the line at 9 am. John followed some time later along with Jim, and the others, Erik, Nick, and Ashley arrived later as they raced in the pm. Davey worked all day at splits and video, and was able to view U23 athlete video in the tent with the racers.
Rick Powell finished 10th to make the Sunday junior semi, with a pair of 1 touch runs, finishing 12th and 8th in Saturday’s runs.
John Gerstenberger had an unfortunate flying bow knock the pole the wrong way and incurred a 50 for missing a downstream gate in a hard offset sequence towards the top of the course for a 37th place on first run. His second run was better, placing him 21st but he made some penalty errors, for a rank of 35th for the day which dropped him out of the junior semi.
Jim Wade ran clean on first run with a mediocre time, but came back from 47th place with a clean run more than 4 seconds faster to finish 12th on second run and 29th overall to make the semi.
Bret Heyl smoked the field on second run, winning the round with the fastest run of the day, clean, and finished 3rd overall for the day with his respectable 9th with a touch on first run. Eric Hurd was solid in 16th place overall, and Scott Mann eked out a semi spot for himself with a 39th place finish.
Nick Lomas took a few touches and was in the game each run until he flipped going into the last up left under the bridge. First run he kept going after a quick roll, placing 10th, but second run he missed a gate and finished out of the semi in 27th place.
Erik Amason was consistent with two one touch runs, finishing 25th to make the semi.
Austin Crane finished 12th overall with a pair of clean runs, while Benn Fraker was 11th but slipped to 34th on second run due to 3 touches and some lost time to finish 23rd overall, and Jeff Larimer snuck into the semi with a 35th and a 26th to finish 30th overall with 2 touches on each run.
Ashley Nee ran cleaner and faster on second run to improve from 22nd to 11th and finish 18th overall for the day, and make her junior semi.
Molly Stock was 34th with 6 touches total and 33rd and 35th place finishes to make her semi. Paris Robinson was 36th and 45th with a pair of 3 touch runs to finish 37th overall and make the semi. Jamie Tidmore was left out of the semi in 44th place overall after a time error on first run and five touches left her with too far to go in 45th place. She made a valiant effort to finish 36th on second run with 2 touches.
A total of 315 boats had started at forty-five second intervals, with 125 K1s, 35 C2s, 78 C1s, and 77 K1Ws racing on this day, from 9 in the morning until almost 6:30 pm.
We retired to the hotel after dinner to rest up for the big day Sunday.
Rick Powell knocked on our door at 7:15 am ready to go race, and the day was started off right. Rick rode down with Jennifer and Jesse, and Ashley rode with Davey, to arrive early and examine the course. A giant TV screen had been raised on a huge crane late in the day Saturday to show the race runs live at the bottom of the course, and Czech television trucks snaked cables up and down the course for the broadcast later in the day.
Rick Powell threw down a great semi run to place third on this run among the juniors. This run would place him the 27th K1 among all ages in the race, and rank him 2nd among the American K1s competing.
Rick’s final run was just as good as the semi until he came in a touch low to the up left below the bridge. He lost significant time in the next up right by coming in too high, placed 9th for the run, and finished 7th overall in the juniors.
Ashley Nee placed 7th in the semi to go on to the final and finish respectably in 8th overall for the event among juniors, with two consistently quick runs and 2 touches in the semi and 4 touches in the final. Ashley finished as the top American K1W in the event in 33rd place among K1Ws of all ages in the race.
Molly Stock was 30th in the semi, just 5.3 seconds behind Ashley with 2 touches. Paris Robinson was 33rd a bit over a second back with one touch.
Scott Mann was the top American K1 in 12th position with a clean run, just out of the final. Brett Heyl would be unable to match his performance of Saturday, placing 26th with 2 touches. Eric Hurd finished 31st with two touches
Jim Wade had penalty troubles and time errors this day to finish 37th with 3 touches.
Canadian K1s Pierre Levesque and John Hastings stayed cool with a funny blog earlier in the week, and raced great to finish 4th and 9th overall in the event, with teammate David Ford, 1999 world champion and 4 time Olympian sadly out of the finals in 15th place.
Stars of Roudnice the weekend before, Russian Mikhail Ageenko and 3rd generation Czech paddler Lubos Hilgert, the grandson, (whose mother is Stepanka Hilgertova, Gold medalist in 1996 and 2000, and his father is Lubos Hilgert, K1 star who was arch competitor with Richard Fox in the eighties) finished 19th and 18th respectively in K1.
Austin Crane came 12th with one touch in the semi, just out of the final.
Jeff Larimer was 18th with two touches in the semi.
Erik Amason placed 30th with two touches in the semi.
Benn Fraker had time errors and penalty issues to finish 34th in his semi.
Germans brought a big team to this event, with 9 K1s, 11 C2s, 8 C1s, and 9 K1Ws for a total of 37 boats racing.
Fabian was the star in K1, but it was a new Fabian, Fabian Dorfler, from Germany, who dominated with a win in qualifying with 2 consistent, fast, clean runs, and went on to punctuate this dominance by winning the final by over four seconds despite a single touch in the semi, producing the best run on each of the semi and final runs. Dorfler had won the Augsburg World Cup event two weeks earlier in the same convincing fashion.
German Mandy Planert placed third in qualifying and won the final just ahead of Stepanka Hilgertova.
Tomas Indruch, Czech C1 Olympian, won the C1 event, with Jan Benzien, German C1 from Leipzig and winner at the World Cup in Augsburg pushed back to fourth position due to a pair of touches in the final.
Consistency seemed to be a theme worth repeating, as it is so important when everything is on the line in the semi final round. To do a great run on that one semi run requires the ability to stretch oneself to the edge of the point of comfort from ones best practices and past races to nail the moves within a range of repeatability so as to insure that the result is enough to move on to the final, without mistakes.
We all hope to be back at Troja next year in mid-summer preparing for great results in the in front of big crowds at the Prague World Championships.
We drove to Minga (Bavarian dialect for Munich) Monday and stayed at the Moevenpick Hotel near the airport. Great food and ice cream greeted us and we turned in early for our 4:30 am wakeup call to get the group to the check-in desk for their flights back to the good old USA.
Jennifer, Davey, and Jesse returned Turbo and Chrome Toolbox and caught their flight out to home sweet home later in the day.
