Mike Dawson, a Teva Tribe kayaker, has been busy competing for the past few months.  Here is an update on his recent activity:

After the Teva Mountain Games in Vail, I arrived in Italy a day late due to being a little relaxed in Denver Airport and missing my flight out of Colorado. Nevertheless, I made it to Milano ready for the Extreme Outdoor Games in Ivera, Italy. I was excited to get to this event, after hearing so much about it over the past few years, and the location had changed to Ivera, meaning a steeper more demanding kayak course!  The event was to include 4 parts--a down river race, a sprint, a head-to-head boatercross, and a slalom. On top of this, the Extreme Teams world champion was to be crowned. Despite having very little training time, and spending most of it running the big drops above the course I managed to keep close to the winners in each event eventually finishing up 2nd overall and taking home 1300 euros!($2000USD) and along with fellow kiwis Sam Sutton and Jared Meehan we put New Zealand on the map winning the Teams world Championship!!!

The top 20 qualifers in the Italian competition were invited to the top 20 shootout above the usual race course. This was an intimidating stretch of water, and to be racing on it definitely required some balls! Half the field was pulled out of the river with ropes, and thrown around in the rapids which included a 10m waterfall! Honza Lasko ripped it to shreds, and I finished up 2nd, just 0.3seconds behind him!

From here, I was moving into a totally different ballgame racing the slalom world cups. Being an olympic discipline the race is held on man made courses throughout Europe. I was unsure what to expect after traveling to the USA, and Italy. The racing began well, and I posted good times fast enough to be in the top 10 in the first two world cups, but picked up some unfortuate time penalties. I finished up ranked 22nd in the world.

Now I'm in Prague, Czech Republic. Training here for the slalom World Championships in Spain in 8 weeks.  For more updates of what I'm up to check out
www.mikekayak.blogspot.com.  Here's the video from the Vail games.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hl809VLVqPU&eurl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.mikekayak.blogspot.com%2F&feature=player_embedded