Greetings from the Freestyle Circuit! The last competition was in Vail, CO for the Teva Mountain Games. Teva is one of my favorite events because they has so much to offer from SUP races, creeking, mtn biking, and duh kayaking. I arrived on wednesday and spent the first couple of days freezing and practicing. The feature at Vail is computer automated, with a push of a button the inflatable bladders under rubber panels change the feature. The day of the quarter finals the river was about normal level and the feature was good but a little flushy. They cut from 15 or so women/junior women to 10 for semi finals, that was held on saturday. The morning of semi finals the weather was warm and the crowed was excited to see the kayakers. It was hard to do much else besides loop, space godzilla, cartwheels, and entry moves. After two heats of great women competitiors, they made the cut to 5 women for finals. Moving on to finals was Emily Jackson, Tanya Faux, Me, Ruth Gordon and Liz Block. Finals started at 4 pm so I went back to the RV to rest, eat, and get ready to compete in front of a ton of spectators. When I got back to the hole at 4 the river came up about 5oo cfs I am guessing, so the feature turned into a hugh wave hole. The eddy access was one sided and you had to paddle fast to catch it, oh and try not to hit your paddle or head on the bridge. You could still loop and bunt and air wheel but it was really flushy. First place was Tanya Faux until Emily took her last ride and throw a mcnasty which looked super hard and she crushed us. The end result was Emily 1st Tanya 2nd and me Haley Mills 3rd. I am still so honored that I placed with such a tough women's class. The next comp is this weekend at Lyons, CO. I am up here training and the hole is so much fun!! Come check out the games this weekend and stop by the CKS tent and say Hello.
