New Zealand, Sweet, Ouch, Oufff.

Hi There,

Well It has been a very epic 2 weeks here in New Zealand.

It started off quite well with the first weekend of New Zealand team Selection race in Kawera, where I place 3rd and 2nd. My runs were smooth with no penalties, and felt very good.

We then headed south to Otaki where the second weekend of their selection along with the 1st ICF world ranking race. The first day was good, I came 3rd with one very solid run, still some time loss but I was quite happy with it. The next day was very different, since New Zealand hasn't got any Ozone, it resulted in me having a huge sunburn, which kind of put me out a bit, and felt very stiff on the water. Still the times weren't to bad, but I had a couple of touches which put me out of the top 3. I ended up 7th.

You can check out all the results on www.canoeslalomnz.co.nz

From there we then headed to the South Island for some sweet river running. We arrived in Hokitika and took a helicopter to take us up the mountain to run the river. That was an amazing experience!

The first 2h were amazing, couple of drops and slides, some bad undercuts, couple of portage. You had to be constantly focus on what you were doing.

I then ran a douple drop first and it ended up taking me into a tiny slot which broke my right blade of my paddle. Two pieces of wood and tape sort the problem out for another hour, but wasn't to confident on the water with that.

Then IT happened! I ran the section blind because it was impossible to see where you were going or what you were going into, Mike and Vavra made it sweet, so i thought it should be fine for me. I lost an edge coming into the jump, which pushed me to the wrong side and ended up getting back looped in that nasty little hole. I spinning like a washing machine for a very long time, i didn't want to swim because I thought I would be fine in the end. But that hole didn't want to give up and made me spin for longer. The boat slightly got washed out when Johann came down the drop after me, not knowing i was still in there, he went underneath me and was fine. I stayed in and then my left blade broke, which meant I couldn't even paddle out, still waiting for a through bag to be chucked at me I held on. My paddle then broke in the middle and took my shoulder with it and dislocated it. I then had to pull the deck off and make it to the bank.

Quick decisions had to made. Mike and Vavra stormed down the river to get help and Joahn stayed out with me. He brought me up the mountain to get out of the cold wind that was coming up. The sandflies were eating us to bits but the mental side of things had to work out, otherwise would have lost my mind. We put the survival blankets on to get a bit of warmth waiting for the rescue to come. After 4h we heard the chopper flying on top of us, but they didn't us and went back, which meant Johan and I had to stay out a night, with only3 cereal bars, a bit of water, a dislocated shoulder, wet gear, sandflies eating us to bit! Didn't sound like an ideal night to me. None of us slept, I sure couldn't, being in an absolute agony! The water was also playing trick with us all night, when banging itself agains the rocks we thought the chopper was coming back for us like a good 10 times, but no, we would have to wait the next day at 7am to hear them. I got winched out and broke back to hospital, with a bit of morphine in me it was sweet!

The Doctor put the shoulder back in no problem, the main problem is that it stayed so long dislocated that I lost some nerves, and the left side of the shoulder is paralysed. I should hopefully get them back soon, fingers crossed, for now its resting and an MRI scan fairly soon to see how bad things are.

You can check out Mikes blog for pictures and their story, www.mikekayak.blogspot.com .

I want to thank Johan for staying out in the bush and help get through the very very painful night, and Mike and Vavra for bombing the river to get rescue! Cheers Bros!!!!


That's all for now,

Cheers,

Ciarán.

Posted on the 06th Feb 10.