Jacqui - World Championships 2006

Every training session I had in the last week preceding the World Championships was good, or even great! I got on the water with more desire to paddle than usual and more drive to do well. I was paddling well, and fast.

The lead-up to the race was prolonged – the girls were racing qualification on the second day, so we had a whole day to watch the mens K1 and C2 racing. This was great because it gave plenty of time to look at the course and figure out my race plan, while watching other paddlers. The downside is that it allowed a lot of time to get nervous…. And I was extremely nervous! With 24 hours still to go before I had to race I was already feeling ill in the stomach, and emotional. It’s a horrible feeling, and I knew I had to get it together and perform, because I would be feeling a whole lot worse after the race if I didn’t make the semi-final (top 40).

Yet after being so nervous in the lead up to qualifications, I managed to make it happen! I didn’t feel that great in the race but my performance was solid and I qualified 11th, wow! This did amazing things for my confidence, and I became much more relaxed. I knew that if I could make it happen in qualification then and I could make it happen again in the semi-final.

During my semi-final run I had some small mistakes and had to force the lines – things weren’t flowing naturally for me. I hit one gate, was low in a couple of upstreams, but no big mistakes and I crossed the finish line thinking it was reasonable….until I looked at my position and I was 17th with 10 competitors to go…I swore then cried. I felt horrible. I didn’t feel like I had paddled that badly, but I was really disappointed. I ended up in 26th.

The World Championships was the biggest competition I’ve been in, there were more competitors and the best field I’ve ever competed against. I’m happy that in such a high pressure event, I had 5 race runs down the course (2 qualification, 2 teams and 1 semi-final) without any big mistakes. The real positive I can take from the experience is my qualification result, where I was extremely nervous but I got it together and made it happen during the race to qualify 11th, which shows my potential.

I know I have improved a lot this year, particularly during my time in Europe. I’m controlling my edges better, turning my shoulders better, converting turns to drives better. My pacing is good. Racing the World Cups and World Championships has finally given me a taste of what I really want to be doing and what it takes to succeed. I have more confidence in my ability now, and I feel more in control of my progress. I can see that if I race well I can be amongst the best in the world. Now I need to identify what to work on to get better.

My physical fitness I think is good and I just need to maintain it. I am strong but I want to get stronger, and I’m looking at doing a block of time focusing on gym work to get the best strength gains that I can. Technically there’s always going to be things to work on. I want to keep working on turning my shoulders in pivots and reverse gates. Also getting my draw in before the upstream gate and dropping the arm under – and my approach to upstream gates needs to be from wider. Mentally, I need to work on my confidence, and I think that comes from training – if I am confident of my abilities in training I will be more confident that I can put this into practise in racing.

I am well capable of better results next year and the only person that can make that happen is ME! And that’s a good thing because I’m the only person I have control over.