RACE REPORT – CHESTER TROOPER-01/07/01

Chester normally hold this race in early March, but it had to be cancelled then because of foot and mouth restrictions. Once MADCC had taken the decision to cancell the Cheshire Ring, the race was rescheduled for this Sunday. Once again, the BCU marathon committee chose Chester’s race as a selection event for the British racing squad. This has two effects on a regional event. The first is a lot more pressure on the race organisre to do everything properly and secondly it brings a lot more paddlers to the event. Whereas the average for a regional event is 40 – 50 , there were 144 paddlers at Chester this time. Quite a number of these take part in the assessment races, which means their results have no bearing in the region, but there is allways a greater number of padlers in the lower divisions who have come along to support their fellow team members. MADCC did it’s best to boost numbers with sixteen members present. The squad was split straight down the middle with eight K1’s and four K2’s.

The first race of interest to MADCC was div 6 k1, where Neil and recently demoted Simon were paddling against four others. Neil fought valliantly against some very strong opposition and scraped home second beating the next paddler by the thickness of the paint on his boat! It was quite a finish with them both putting 110% effort into it and there was a lot of shouting from the bank! Simon was hoping for a better day in the lower division, but it wasn’t to be! The race is held over a loop of four miles and Simon retired ( posh word for gave up) after the first loop complaining of pains in his arm –I said Arm! The other eight milers, John and Adrian, back together after nearly a year found the pace tough in 5/6 K2, and finished third. In Div7 K1 MADCC entered four out of the ten starters. Another tough race saw Paul finish fourth Mike fifth and Mark sixth. Kerrian came in eighth but just off the pace and collected his second D notice of the year. MADCC managed to summon up a couple of newcomers into Div 9 K1 and a surprise entry! Mark Hayes decided to go it alone after his outing with Margaret and secured himself yet another medal with bronze, very well done Mark, long may it continue! Young Nicholas Corrin seemed to enjoy his first race and came home in 7^th place, good work young fella! The surprise was good old Liam who turned up to do the fun race, found there wasn’t one and so paddled a marathon race in his Micro 230! The man either needs a medal or locking up for insanity I’m not sure which! Well done Liam, it must have been very hard work. Div 7/8 K2 saw a larger than normal entry of ten boats. Doug, in his first outing of the year, partnered Pat and they managed a respectable sixth place. The old pairing of Claire and Laura proved less reliable than in the past as they came home tenth. This was put down to a fit of the giggles just after the start which led to a swim! Most unusual for what was once a very successful pair. Pauline and Keri did a stirling job in Div 9 K2 paddling the Ardeche to gain third place.

As the team results were compiled it was obvious that Chester were going to be crowned champions of the day, and with 33 paddlers on the water that would mean them extending their lead at the top of the bums on seats table. The finaql result on the day was as much as MADCC could expect, taking second place behind Chester. Freestyle were third, Runcorn fourth and DCP fifth. These results leave MADCC one point behind Chester in the Hasler league and a huge 37 points adrift in the points and posteriors. With just one race to go this year we will not regain the P & P, but if we try we may still win the region’s Hasler points.