This year was really stressful. I started the year being sick and when I finally got back to the shape, I broke my pecs muscle. It took me a while to be able to kayak after that injury and it didn't look really good for me for this season. The doctors said, I won´t be able to compete, or win the World Championships, which made me really sad! Nevertheless I promised myself to be in the best shape as possible, what ever it costs. Slowly with lots of pain I started to train again. I was focused to get back to the shape and to compete at the Worlds!
A few weeks ago my most important event of the year became the reality. The World Championships! We went there earlier for training and got to use to the hole. I needed to be there soon because I still could not push 100% into the trainings. I am still getting sore and pain so I need a lot of convalescences. During the event I did well. I still did hold my 3rd place from qualification to the night semifinals which was pretty good.
Nina had a really great qualification run, she got around 500 points in one ride, which was the second best run behind Claire - previous and current World Champion.
The semi finals were during the night with artificial lightning systems. Sometimes it is really hard to compete without having previously trained during the night and with light shining to you. I mean, the lights were on good position but anyway this might cause some mistakes.
Around 50.000 people were watching the show life over the TV and internet! It was a great feeling to be part of it! The woman category was first. Nina had a good start, but she missed some moves and unfortunately it wasn't enough for the cut into the finals. In men I did OK even I didn't do my best and I finished on 3rd place behind Tomasz (POL) and Dane (USA). The cut was really difficult this year and the quality of paddlers went up really rapidly, so I am happy that I did this cut.
In the finals I did a good first run, which moved me into the first place for a short time. Dane Jackson took lead after the second run with only 7 points. However I was trying to make it even better in my last run, it didn't work out for me and Dane became the new World Champion. I end up second for the third time in my kayak career and Tomasz Czaplicky got the 3rd.
After this event I think I am having the most medals in K1M senior category ( 3x silver World Championships, 4x gold World Cups, 3x silver World Cups, 1x bronze World Cups, 1x gold Europeans, 1x bronze Europeans...)
Awesome! I can´t wait to start my trainings again!
See you,
Peter Csonka
