Tuesday
Jul082008

::CANADIAN SUMMER::

It's 35 degrees celsius in Ottawa, Ontario today. I heard it might be hot in Beijing, so I asked Prime Minister Stephen Harper to crank up the temperature a bit for our training camp here in our Nation's capital; he was more than happy to oblige.

Thanks to Ben Fouhy for the above photo of the 1:35.630 race in Poznan from last weekend, as you can see the flags are leaning only slightly to the left... so it really wasn't that windy at all, wink-wink.

A Small Request... if anyone out there has a video of this race, could you post it on youtube or send me an email from the contact page? I'd love to watch it! Supposedly the ICF is starting it's own channel on youtube, that'll be pretty sweet.
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Wednesday
Jul022008

::NEW SPORTSNET BLOG::

Home Sweet Home Baby!!

New Blog is up. Word to Bryan Colangelo, the GM at the RAPS, doing a wicked job...

Great to to be back home in Canada, training starts today! See you on the water...

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Sunday
Jun292008

:ONE THIRTY FIVE POINT SIX THREE ZERO::

Quick times!! Tim Brabants (Great Britian Rowing), Ken Wallace (AUS) and Steve Ferguson (NZ) and I burst out laughing when the times popped up on the scoreboard while we were at boat control after the K1 500m final this afternoon in Poznan, Poland. "1:35?? Yeah Right?!"... I won, Tim was second, Kenny was third and Steve was fourth, and Anders Gustafsson (SWE) was 5th. Believe it or not, it was a tail-wind. World Cups are now complete, I finish up with 5 Gold and 1 Bronze, which I'm stoked about, and my next race is the Olympic games in August, which I am also, obvoiusly, very stoked about (please contact me with any cool new synonyms for "stoked"). Tom Hall and I both won the World Cup overall points, which is pretty sweet too.

Back to Elvis, just for a second. Elvis Costello (who'd you think?) played a free concert last night at the race-course, although I doubt he knew there was a canoekayak world cup going on. I've always been a big fan, and he was really cool with his black glasses and overly-scarved outfit... He didn't play "Pump it up", but he pumped me up, and "Radio Radio" was wicked to see live.

Going home in the morning!! Woop Woop!
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Saturday
Jun282008

::WORLD CUP #3 - POZNAN, POLAND::

Jin dobre (good day) from Poznan, Poland. How do you say "holy crap it's windy in Poznan", in Polish? Cause it is, and for those who don't know, windy makes wavy... but it's all good, windy also makes wicked fast times. I had an awesome K1 1000m race today, winning in 3:25, Tim Brabants (GBR - that's Great Britian Rowing...) and Eirik Veraas Larsen (NOR) were close behind in 2nd and 3rd, congrats gentlemen...

Congrats also to Tom Hall for his awesome 1000m in his C1, capturing his second gold of his 2008 World Cup campaign, with Mathieu Goubel of France (Allez les Bleu!) in second, and Andreas Kiligkaridis of Greece (Oopa!) in third. Thanks again to Andreas for taking the shiny gold medal in the competition for the hardest to pronounce last name.

500m races are tomorrow... check back for updates!
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Sunday
Jun152008

::DUISBURG WORLD CUP::

For the second week in a row, the Canadian Canoe Kayak Team walked the walk, here in Duisburg, Germany at World Cup II. Solid results from all three disciplines this weekend, Gold Medals in C1 1000m (Way to Go Tom Hall!! Congrats on the Olympic Nomination), K2 1000m (Richard Dober Jr. and Andrew Willows), and my K1 500m; Bronze Medallions were awarded to Mark Oldershaw for his awesome C1 500m performace, and to the C2 of Gabriel Beauchesne-Sevigny & Andrew Russell for their wicked 1000m race, and for my K1 1000m.

Both of my K1 races were pretty good. I find it tough racing back to back weekends, so I'm stoked to have a week between now and Poznan World Cup III to get some solid training sessions in. Wednesday and Friday this week I'm taking part in Andreas Dittmer's Veolia Sprint Cup Regatta for the third time. Congrats to Andreas as well for his Gold Medal today in C1 500!

::NEW SPORTSNET BLOG::

German for Blog....
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