The Irish Kayak Intervarsities 2011

This year it was over to UCC and CIT to host the Irish Kayaking Intervarsity’s. The varsities are a hotly contested battle over 3 days with competitions in four disciplines of kayaking: polo, whitewater, freestyle and the long distance. The competition is a well known event among young kayakers in Ireland for the paddling and the epic parties that follow. This year 12 colleges participated with somewhere in the area of 2-300 paddlers. UL were the favourites and they did not disappoint taking home the overall trophy for the second year in a row.
This year I was representing a strong contingent from G.M.I.T kayak club with about 60 paddlers making themselves noticed on the water as well as at the party!

The weekend kicked off with a polo competition at the National Rowing Centre where the Castlebar team took home gold with four strong wins.

-the winning team-
On Saturday morning at the early hour of 8am nice water levels were experienced on the Upper Bandon for the team whitewater race. The Upper Bandon is a class 3 run with several small rapids and one class 3+ drop towards the end. The race culminated at the finish line just below the main drop. This drop provided a make or break location for the teams with several swims experienced metres away from the finish. Here the home team from Cork took home gold.

-teamUCD-
In the afternoon students pitted their endurance against each other on a long distance race course also at the National Rowing Centre. K boats and high performance kayaks raced on a course of 8 k with the G.P.s and Canadian canoes having to paddle 4k. The long distance has no limit on the number of paddlers each college can enter and here G.M.I.T entered a strong team of about 30 paddlers. And received a notable amount of medals; first place in the K1, second in the Topo-duo, second + third in women’s HP and second in men’s HP.
I finished second in the men’s HP class with a tough battle against a paddler from UL kayak club. Sprinting against him for the last kilometre it was anyone’s race and I finished inches ahead of him in front of a massive crowd of vocal supporters from G.M.I.T on the bank.

-Some long distance action-
The Sunday saw the freestyle event being run on the sluice on the river Lee just outside of Cork city. Sadly the water level was not very favourable producing a very flushy hole on the day. The event was run in a ‘round robin’ format with each team of 4 having 8 minutes to freestyle it up! The 2 highest scoring runs from each competitor were then counted towards the college’s total score.

-a top secret location in the heart of Cork city-

It was then back to UCC campus for the prize giving where GMIT provided the entertainment-


Overall results:
UL 1ST, UCC 2nd and GMIT 3rd.
Big thank you to UCC and all the varsities team for producing a fantastic event. Next year will hopefully see G.M.I.T. hosting the event for the first time in Castlebar.
Photos by Nigel and Barbra honourary members of G.M.I.T.K.C.