Normally by the end of August the Ottawa river is really low and we’ve been surfing Garberator and the other great waves that come in at these levels for weeks. However, this year the river has been stupid high and although the river has been dropping drastically in the last week, it hasn’t dropped enough for these waves yet. This made things tough for the organizers of the Canada Cup! Usually the competition is held on Garb but with the river on 3 ½ the call was made to hold it on a hole/wave called right-side horseshoe (also the site of the ’97 world Champs). This is a pretty fun feature where you can pull off both hole & wave moves so although it’s no Garb was set to be an interesting day. So as the competitors headed to McCoys rapid for warm-ups & briefing it was soon discovered that the level had dropped to around 2 and this feature had become more of a shallow hole and so not as much fun. The decision was quickly made to move the event to ‘Corner Wave’ a nice steep green wave that is great but pretty angled so easy to flush off the side and with a bit of a surgy tongue down the centre. A tricky feature but you can go pretty big if you get it right. There was a good turnout despite the late notice and clash with the World Cup in Europe and the day was a beauty. After a late start the comp commenced and the Junior men started ripping, this was a big class and very close. Eventually the junior and open women had their rides and the senior men went pretty huge with Joel K scoring a huge 68 points and i believe the next best score of the day was 40 something. At the end of the day, I wound up winning the pro womens, Joel K the mens, Katie K the jnr womens and Devon the jnr mens. I didn’t know about it until it was already happening so missed it, but the weekend before, the first of the Nth American Champs competitions (Canada Cup being the second & final) was held at the Black river, NY. River levels were tough for the organisers down there too. Normally they would try and hold the comp on Route 3 wave which needs a flow of around 1500. They had a flow of 9000! So therefore, moved the event to a hole called ‘holes brothers. So, after the Canada Cup prizegiving, they announced the 2008 North American champs from the combined scores of the two events. Surprisingly, I ended up third in the pro-women after competing in only one event, not sure how but I’ll take it. Canada Cup final results & snaps as below... Pro-Men Junior-Men 1st Joel Kowalski 1st Devyn Scott 2nd Moe Kelleher 2nd Isaac Holden 3rd Tino Specht 3rd Kalob Grady Pro-Women Junior-Women 1st Louise Urwin 1st Katie Kowalski 2nd Cheryl McGregor 2nd Alex Shallhorn 3rd Sylvie Lebelle 3rd Sara Daub Canada Cup & Nth American Champs 2008
Beauty day @ McCoys rapid
Oh corner wave...
Joel K - winner pro-mens
Katie K  - winner Jnr womens
Moe - 2nd place pro-mens
Kyle 4th place jnr mens
Moe styles
What the...
Emily - youngest competitor at 10yrs!!
Sara Daub...go girl!!!
Kyle ripping it up
 
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