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22:51
30 Apr
2008 |
Front Page Splash |
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Today I've been up at the National Water Sports Centre in Holme Pierrepont, near Nottingham, at their canoe slalom course.
We've been filming 2004 canoe slalom bronze medallist Helen Reeves, who's going to be commentating on the sport for the BBC in Beijing this summer.
She's retired from competitive canoeing now, so spending the day doing run after run while we filmed a canoeing guide for the web and telly took it out of her - especially as she had a cold to start with, let alone by the finish!
But it looks like it will be brilliant stuff, particularly the headcam we strapped to her helmet. I've only seen about a minute of that and if the rest is as good as I think it will be, you'll be wanting to see it. Gives an amazing impression of what it looks and feels like to go down an Olympic canoe slalom course.
And believe me, it's not an easy sport. You need the upper body strength of several yaks and the love of cold, wet climates normally associated with penguins.
Having said that it's easier to understand, as a spectator, than you might think. At a very basic level: you go through the green gates downstream, the red gates upstream, and get penalised if you miss or touch a gate. Through the gate is the plan. There's 25 gates to get through, and the courses normally take about 90 seconds to complete.
Good to see Andrew Hadfield as well, who only just missed out on going to Beijing but should be a huge prospect for 2012. He's been writing for the BBC Sport site during the Olympic qualification process and has just posted a cracking summary of how he nearly made the 2008 Games.
Today's lesson: never forget your coat when going to film canoeing. I'd just joined the M1 at about 6:45am when I thought, "I wonder if I picked my coat up," and had a quick glance at the back seat. Nothing there. The morning wasn't too nippy but the wind and rain settled in for the afternoon and a certain pillock got quite cold and damp, despite telling anyone who would listen that he was fine, brave, and liked the cold anyway. Honest.
You know it's desperate when you've appropriated the t-shirt kept in the car as a rag to clean condensation from the windscreen for the last half-year, and are wearing it as a base layer for want of anything warmer.
Today's other lesson: if you're not an Olympic athlete, make sure you get some breakfast at Leicester Forest East services on the way up. Stupidly I was in the fast lane with no hope of flinging the car across to the sliproad, so that opportunity passed me by. I got to Holme Pierrepont - a UK Sport Centre of Excellence - for 7:30am, so nipped inside to see what the canteen was doing.
The menu promised me scrambled egg, sausage, bacon, beans, the works. Excellent! But when I rocked up at the counter and ordered one of everything, I was asked if I'd stayed overnight. For some reason I told the truth and said no, and was then informed I wasn't allowed a cooked breakfast then.
This left me in the horrible position of having to find something else unhealthy for breakfast in an elite athletes' canteen. In fairness I can't complain about the combination of croissants, yoghurt and banana I ended up with, but there wasn't a greasy spoon option in sight. The very best you could do was a basket of muffins above which a sign had been placed, reading: "Stop and think". Run and eat!
Pics from the day (and a few from an Olympic training camp in Holland) are on BBC Sport's Flickr stream.
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by Ollie : Digg him : Facebook this |
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