This is a joint blog shared by 2 lazy pple - Ciping & Wilbur, who wishes to use each other to maintain the blog. Sadly, Ciping is the more inactive one and Wilbur does most of the work in the end. Feel free to post comments on the tag-board, it feels good to know pple are actually reading and responding to your posts. It gives motivation to write more.
We were down at macritchie at 8.30. Our 1st race was at 9.20 - A pair of K2
year 1 girls, audrey and yi ling. Tension filled the air.. How many people
will qualify today? Will there be letdowns, disappointments, or hopefully,
miracles?
The 1st race begun, and was over. The girls pair was 4th out of 5 boats. It
was a good race, considering they trained for half a year only, but it was
just not good enough.
Race after race after race. The 2nd and 3rd would progress to the semi finals. The first would be able to go straight to the finals 2 days later. Those who were not expected to qualify did not qualify. Mainly, 2 groups.
1st group: The year 1s
2nd group: The year 2s who slackened off and were merely competing (to get R points?)
In fact, it was very bad. Some lost by such a wide margin it was embarassing, because they did not train consistently. Even those who trained really hard, but started late (in APril), did not make it.
The idea of the competition we were facing was sinking in.. slowly, but surely.
The day passed. We had 1 finalist, Lynn - T1 500m. She had the best race of the day, was the 1st in her race.
We had 4 other semi finalists - A T1 guys single, Nicolas; K1 guy single, Rifdi; T2 guys pair, Li Keng and Keith, and a T1 girl single, Carol.
The upset of the day - A T2 guys pair, Edmund and Chunxiang, who had trained hard, very hard in fact, almost every day of the week. They were expected to qualify, but missed the mark by just.. 20 cm?
Kayaking is a cruel sport.
Oh, on to my race. I warmed up a few times before my actual race and drank lots of glucose. But when my actual race came, I did not warm up just before it. Consequently, I suffered the effects of having a very unstable race, added on to the nervousness I was feeling. It started out OK at 1st, then as it went on, the boat tilted, shaked.. and when we could have gotten 4th, we slipped back and emerged 6th. But at least we thrashed the last boat by quite a bit - TPJC.
The next day was exciting.
This time, top 3 would qualify for finals. Nicolas got in 1st. But the real exciting race was the T2 guys pair, who managed to qualify by the same mark the previous guy pair lost by the day before - about 20 cm. Another sad thing happened, Rifdi, the K1 guy single, had a very bad race. His boat suddenly veered to the side in the middle. As a result, he did not manage to qualify. As for Carol, she did not qualify, but put up a good fight.
The final day. Would we get any medals? The whole team was down, some VJ students came to support, even our principal. Yet, Lynn, despite putting up a good fight, was just not good enough. Li Keng and Keith, did not have their best race, but came in 5th / 6th. Yet they were disqualified, when they didn't even know why. Possibly their paddle went out of lane. Another cruel fact of kayaking - if your paddle so much so as crosses out of your lane, you're out. And trust me, it isn't even easy to get your boat going straight in the 1st place.
But all was not lost. Nicolas.. we had high hopes for him. His race was tight, neck to neck until the very end. "NI-CO-LAS! NI-CO-LAS! NI-CO-LAS!" We were all, as 1, cheering him on. At the very end, he was overtaken, by that small margin, 20 cm, again, and came in third. But it was he, who won VJ's 1st medal.
After that race, Timothy, captain of the CJ team, an expected medalist who did not get his medal because of a bad race, knelt down in front of his team and apologized.
Another cruel fact of kayaking.
We have all seen how tough the competition was. We were told, we had to make the mark by next year, or we would be ousted, because our school would start accepting experienced kayakers.
A tough training programme was drawn out by our exco. Our teacher in charge, however, had many doubts in our team. It was demoralizing. He said, by the end of this year, if we do not make the standard, we would be kicked out. The fitness standard? 2.4 timing below 10, and 15 pull ups.
Another cruel fact of kayaking.
But it is true. I don't want to spend 2 years training hard, but not hard enough, and end up in disappointment, like how our year 2s fared. Their parting words to us were mainly, "Train harder." "At least you all have 1 more year."
Yes it is cruel. So I guess, if I want to carry on in this sport, I'll have to train doubly hard. I want a medal next year, and I'll work for every single atom in that medal.
To do that, and to do well for studies too, requires sacrifice. A lot of it. Hopefully, I'll be able to be focused all the way. Hopefully, the team will be able to be focused all the way, and change the fate of VJ for the 2006 National Canoeing Championships.
Hopefully, with determination, this cruel sport will be less cruel to us next year.
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