The Global Paddling Community

A short report and results from the second edition of the Iberian (Portugal and Spain :-) Freestyle Competition, which took place on the Miño River on August 16th and 17th 2003.

The weekend was just perfect to celebrate this second edition of the Iberian Freestyle event. A perfect water level made a very retentive hole and we enjoyed warm weather. The Miño river has lots of nice places to play, but we can consider this hole (some 500 meters downstream of the famous Miño wave) the best one. It's about 10 meters wide, allowing both action to the right and left alike.

Some of the strongest Spanish and Portuguese paddlers attended the call of the organisers: Teixugos from Galice and CCABP from the Portuguese side.

After the preliminaries there were no big surprises. We saw some very nice moves such as Loops, Space Godzilas and Air Blunts. Things began to change after the Quarter Finals on Sunday morning when two favorites (Pablo Valcarcel from Spain and Pedro Baptista from Portugal, both represented their countries at the Worlds) found themselves out of the competition.

Approaching the Finals the eyes of dozens of people on the banks were on 3 Portuguese (Antonio Palavra and the Estrela brothers) and 2 Spanish (Augustin Ciriza and Edu Etxeberría), the Spanish being far stronger in every ride. Things didn't change much trough the Finals, which gives us the following final results (Rank Name - Club):

1 Eduardo Etxeberria -C.N.S.S
2 Agustin Ciriza -C.N.S.S
3 Pedro Luis De Sousa Estrela -Gdcn Nabancia
4 Antonio Manuel Tavares Palabra -Arrepions
5 Raul Orlando Pereira Estrela -Gdcn Nabancia
6 Pablo Valcarcel Carracedo -Teixugos
7 Pedro Campos Andrada Baptista -Teixugos
8 Hector Fernandez Gonzalez -Teixugos
9 Jose Miguel Primoy Castro -Clube Montaña Quixos
10 Jorge Pesado-Quintomax
11 Paulo Luis Campos Pavon -Teixugos
12 Victor Aparicio Abundancia -Arrepions
13 Carlos Alberto De Almeida Bingre -Teixugos
14 Fernando José Godinho -Gdcn Nabancia
15 Rafael Serrano Ramos -X-Kayak
16 Juan Diego Cano Hernandez -S.E. Malaga
17 Henrique Artur Gomes De Sousa -Teixugos
18 Jean Miguel Iglesias -C.N.S.S
19 Jose Luis Fernandez Vazquez -Clube Montaña Quixos

As for the girls, they fought strongly till the last moment, ending with Sonia Fernández, a newcomer to competition, to be the winner:

1 Sonia Fernandez -Teixugos
2 Concepcion Elosúa Menendez -Arrepions
3 Alexandra Menezes -Gdc Nabancia
4 Maria Teresa Da Silva Rodrigues -Teixugos

Report for PLAYAK.COM by Rui Calado, edited by joempie.