cornerwave and competitions?

i just got a bunch of shots from colin moneypenny on the oks competition on cornerwave last week. thanks a lot!
cornerwave is one of my favourites on the ottawa. quite the dynamic wave with a sweet surfer's left shoulder, fast and incredibly steep and green in the right levels. competition levels were a bit too high, so it was comparably slow and foamy but still good enough to throw some stuff on.
i've been learning a lot on that wave lately, so i tried to put a few new tricks into my rides.
in the end it placed me 4th, which, considering the other competitors, is quite alright i guess.
i guess they didn't even score some of my tricks (flipturns i think), which might have put me even further up. final ranking for the top five was EJ, Stephen Wright, Joel Kowalski, me, Nick Troutman and Moe Kelleher.

it was a small event, mainly organized for a bunch of juniors paddling with the keeners and also part of the junior olympics or something like that, so there was a lot of waiting and cheering for those kids involved. this also made the pro mens class pretty small, and i guess a delay of 4(!!!) hours until the whole thing started didn't make it any better.

it's weird, cause i usually don't consider myself a competitor, but this time, on this wave, i really wanted to go out and see how good i can do. which means that i was keen!
however, from showing up at 9:30 in the morning and finally competing at around five there was too much time wasted! sorry wilderness tours and oks, nice that you were organizing this, but some preparation and a clear schedule would make this whole thing way more enjoyable!
seeing good boaters as well as spectators leave because of so much waiting makes me think that this is not the greatest way to push our sport. it would be easy to get people involved, especially on a spot like mccoys on the ottawa, so many people came paddling through, got excited that there was stuff going on and then left kinda disappointed when they realized that nothing was happening for the longest time.
anyways, in the end i had a blast and was happy with some consistent rides.
and i think next time there's a competition around i'll still go out. i always do.
i just hope that more people will do so as well.
for the fun of it.

anyways, here are some of colins shots.






peace,
sven