Most of the women and some of the men team arrived Sunday in Zaventem.
They arrived 24 hours later in Belgium than expected.
First seven hours delay caused by weather conditions, afterwards 17 hours problems with flights of Delta (Delta sucks).
The team stayed 24 hours in the airport of San José before they could fly to Atlanta, because Delta didn’t want to pay for a hotel.
In the primitive base camp from the World Championship in Costa Rica, we had no mobile phone coverage and no internet access.
That was the reason we couldn't update the site in Costa Rica.
The base camp was a tent camp. There were made some primitive eco toilets and cold showers. Every day we took a bus to the top of a mountain.
Then we walked 45 minutes down the hill before we could start our training or competition. At the end of the day we walked back up the hill for a big hour. All this in the heat of Costa Rica.
To reach the river was already a physical endurance.
Here you have a short summary of the results we obtained:
WOMAN TEAM: (in total 19 teams)
- Sprint: 9th place
They had a very good line and gave everything of their selves. They were only a few hundreds of seconds behind the 8th and the 7th place.
- Head 2 head: 9th place
They had some bad luck in the classification of teams. The women came out against the first team of the sprint, who were the women of the Netherlands. Despite that, their run was very good. They had a fast start, but they couldn't start on the preferred position. They didn't lose the Netherland team and on the technical part of the H2H they even got closer to the Netherland team, because they took a better lane. The Belgian girls arrived very close behind the Netherlands. Because of that, they had the best losing time and became 9th.
- Slalom: 6th place
The most technical discipline. The first run was not so good, the girls wanted to take all the 14 gates, but it was a very difficult slalom and some gates were impossible to get for the women teams. So the Belgian women missed a lot of gates in their first run. In the second run they tried to get 10 gates of the 14th that would be possible for them. They got all the ten gates and became 6th on the slalom, before the Netherland and the Japan team which is a professional team. The girls were very proud of their performance.
- Downriver: 12th place
On the downriver the women didn't had always the best lane. They bounced to some rocks and also got stuck on some rocks. Despite this, they kept on paddling as hard as they could. 1 hour and five minutes without stopping!
--> Overall result: 10th place
MEN TEAM: (in total 29 teams)
- Sprint: 19th
- Head 2 Head: 29th
They took a good lane just behind the Slovenian team. At the end of the run the Belgium men wanted to pass the Slovenians by taking a shorter lane. But there was a rock just under the water which they didn't see and got stuck on that rock. So they lost a lot of time on their run.
- Slalom: 21th
They took nearly all the gates and had quite a good run. Other men teams where faster, but the Belgium men team obtained a good result.
- Downriver: 18th
--> Overall result: 22th
More extensive results you can find here:
Photo's you will find later on the site