Head to Head

Today saw sleek moves and great clashes on the Tully River as the second day of competition of the 2019 IRF World Rafting Championship, powered by Experience Co. rolled on by. The crowds were roaring as junior teams (U19 and U23) hit the Tully River to compete in the slalom discipline. The winner is determined by the team who can navigate the course of slalom poles with the least amount of touches and misses combined with a fast time. Whilst Open and Master teams battled it out in the head to head in the afternoon. Competitors and spectators filled the banks of the river to support and cheer on each team.

The gates of 5, 6 and 7 proved very tricky for the teams, making gate 5 often meant the raft was poorly lines up for the next two gates. It was New Zealand U23 Men’s team who tamed the Tully River today by taking first place followed by Czechia and Australia. Australia U23 Men flip Indonesia U23 Women showed their competitors just how to weave through those slalom gates and, although they struggled at some of the gates they still did it well enough to place first followed by Great Britain and Japan. Czechia U19 Men’s team had a brilliant run with only 15 secs in penalties, the lowest of the day, which resulted in the fastest time of the day of 221.87 secs. This placed them in a convincing 1st place, 40.89 seconds ahead of Australia who flipped their raft adding additional time to their final score. Indonesia took third.

Some interesting tactics were used by some teams, and many were well entertained by New Zealand Open Men’s team’s wild tactic to get ahead of Japan at the third buoy. This failed and Japan went on to take the Silver, beaten by an excellent team from China, who were racing in their first ever WRC. Third place was taken by Russia. The Open Women saw the continuously excellent New Zealand Open Women taking the top honours, Japan in second and last year’s World Champions, Czechia, taking third.