Junior Olympics - brought to you in part by WRSI

The 2011 North American Whitewater Junior Olympics Festival was held the 14^th thru the 19^th of July on the St Vrain in Lyons, CO.  The Junior Olympics is a whitewater festival for junior and cadets and usually attracts paddlers from all over US and Canada.  This year there were more than 80 paddlers representing 5 different countries: USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and Sweden.  The vast majority of paddlers were from the US and Canada while there were a handful Australian paddlers as well as one from New Zealand (Courtney Kerin who won the silver medal in junior women K1 at worlds) and I represented Sweden.

I am throwing a Space Godzilla in the freestyle comp.

Picture courtesy of Rfort Fotos 

This year we competed in slalom, downriver, freestyle, boater cross and sladeo.  Sladeo is a combination of slalom and freestyle (sometime referred to rodeo) where we had to navigate down a short slalom course in a playboat and we got 5 seconds deducted from our time for every trick we would do between the start and the finish.

Tough offset - Henry Hyde and I compete in C2 slalom.

Picture courtesy of Rfort Fotos

Junior Olympics is an awesome event and of course it could not have taken place without the support of sponsors and volunteers.  So here is a list of people and organizations whom I like to thank:

• WRSI for sponsoring the event. 
• Mike Hyde and his wife for planning, organizing and running the entire event. 
• The town of Lyons, CO for hosting the event.