Now for 5 years in a row, the French Alps are the place for the Teva Dutch National Rafting Championships. Lacking the White Water in their own country, the “Netherland Rafting Bond” together with Wildwaterschool.nl and Teva Benelux put together a great event again on the Durance River with 29 DutchTeams attending. 

After most teams been practicing for the last couple days on the different race courses, since the river is been flowing with a record flow due to the massive snowpack last winter. The tension and excitement began to rise during the official opening last night at the rafting base of of Wildwaterschool.nl were all Teams got introduced and interviewed. The team captains meeting was packed with eager rafters to hear what the race committee decided. Everyone was happy to find out that with some minor adjustments to the courses the race will get ahead the next morning first with the Sprint on the Rabioux rapid and in the afternoon with slalom practice on the course further upstream.

This morning saw some strong Teams racing the short but pushy sprint course, ending by taking a bit hit in the famous Rabioux wave. The freshly crowned female Rafting Sprint World champions “Teva Revolution” dominated the women’s class by showing most men teams how it is been done with precise stroking and team work.

Since we never rafted together, we knew that we will be in for a very interesting race, especially without any practice... (the boys arriving at 5 in morning by driving all night the long haul from the Netherlands :-) Surprisingly we managed to keep it pretty good together, only with a few side way moments and we ended up in 9^th place, not bad at all !!

The rest of the day we spend taking a couple practice runs on the slalom course with some interesting runs never making all gates…

I am sure after tonight's party we will have our lines figured out for tomorrow. 

Stay tuned.