Irish freestyle National Championship

This past weekend the Irish freestyle national championships and team selections took place on the Curragower wave in Limerick. People were very skeptical of whether or not the competition would actually take place as Ireland has not received a lot of rainfall of recent. Gower works almost like the skookumchuck rapids of British Columbia as the wave is formed when both there is a low tide and when there is a big release from a dam up river. Even with the lack of rain the competition was guaranteed a release from the dam from the ESB. Thanks guys ;)

Forty competitors from all over Ireland arrived down to strut their stuff. Men women, juniors and even C1'er... The sun was shining and moral high which made for a fantastic day.

Photos taken By Dave P



Neil Gibson spraying that water around like theres no tomorrow



Entry move to start/end things off



Tom Dunphy donkey flipping it



Moogie panam



Moe pistol fliping into first



Moe showing us the bottom of that lovely project 52 mid helix



Moe Kelleher mid blunt



Gibson loving that air-time



Mickey Barry mid blunt



Conor Bredin with a nice blunt



Len getting some flash-back action



Mark Leonard with a lovely donkey flip



Len cleaning it up



Len in the middle of a pistol flip



Sinead ripping it up



Kim in winning mode again



Caoimhe rocking herself into 1st place.



Results can be found here http://i367.photobucket.com/albums/oo114/adrianshanahan/Curragowereventoneresultssc.jpg


Peace out.

Some videos from the past few years.

Slow-mo sluice video from a few years back.

2007 Easkey and Sluice footage.

2008 summer boating.

Sluice session.

After nearly a month I thought it was time to get back into a freestyle boat. I had been training both in slalom and surf over the past month and was feeling a lot fitter. The Irish freestyle squad were training that day and therefore there was a release of water from the lexlip dam.

The water levels were perfect for some nice Mcnasties and some huge loops. It had been a while since I had even attempted a loop in sluice as the levels have been so high. I was delighted with the level as it allowed for some nice airtime.

Check out some of the photos taken by James

Starting a loop

Midway through a loop

Landing the loop.

Space Godzilla left

Space Godzilla right.

All in all it was good training for the national championships which are soon approaching.

Surfing ala Clare

I got some well needed surf training in this past weekend. I travelled down to West Clare on the Friday evening after class. My friend Wayne Timmons was having a massive party on the Saturday night so I decided to go training during the day and have some fun later on that evening. The waves were nice and clean on the Saturday but a little messy on Sunday. Unfortunately no photos were taken on Saturday. Here are some of the photos taken on Sunday though.

The waves were breaking very far away from a good viewpoint so this made it difficult to get good photos.

Thanks to Frances O D for all the photos.

So after about 8-9 hours surfing in two days and a whole load of partying I headed home to Dublin again.