More than one month ago, I was racing World Championships in Duisburg. It was a race with a lot of emotions before and after the race. After a surprising win in my Heat, I was in a really good positions for Semi-Final. But I knew before, that a Semi-Final is another game than the Heat. From start on I had a good pressure, but Polish Rafal Rosolski and Slovak Peter Gelle set me under pressure. They were about one boat in front of me during all the race. I had a lot of power for a finish and gave absolutely everything. I came closer to Rosolski, but also he was able to increase his speed. Finally he crossed the finish line half a second ahead of me. I was third and hoped to reach final maybe with the fastest looser time. Bulgarian Miroslav Kirchev took this place, also half a second faster than me. Normally I would search this half a second which refused me not to go into A-Final. But on that day I was absolutely sure, that I was not able to paddle faster. So I tried to focus me on the B-Final. Later that day and on the next day, I felt a little sick. My coach and I decided not to paddle the 500m.
The 1000m B-Final on Saturday was a solid race, but I felt quite powerless. I was not able to make a really good finish sprint. Anyway I am confident with this third place in the B-Final. Only Marko Tomicevic and Anders Gustafsson beat me in there. After that, I looked forward to the last race at the World Champs, the 5000m. I started to race 5000m international this year. It is big fun and I am never so nervous like before a 5000m start. The reason is everything can happen. I normally try to beware me from crashes with other contenders. But this time I was unlucky. After my first stroke somebody hit my paddle and I nearly felt in the water. After this little intermezzo the field was already gone and I started behind the mass of 37 paddlers. I thought about giving up, but I decided to go und try everything. I was overtaking a lot of paddlers and finally fought until place 11. I am happy with this result. It seems that my physics are okay, when I can make this result with that terrible start 🙂
If you want to improve Swiss German you can watch the Duisburg Blog from my friend Michael:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ecsBDqACrg&feature=c4-overview&list=UUC8pufmn2m-Of5cA23JEiRw
If you want to watch the full B-Final and the full 5000m I have also links:
B-Final: http://eurovision.digotel.com/icf/index.html?video_id=12549
5000m: http://splink.tv/kanu/wm-duisburg-2013-finale-k1-5-000m-maenner
Results:
K1 1000m
1. Max Hoff (GER) 3:44.210
2. Ken Wallace (AUS) 3:44.652
3. Bence Dombvari (HUN) 3:44.680
Ferner: 3. im B-Final und somit Gesamt 12. Fabio Wyss 3:37.032
K1 5000m
1. Ken Wallace (AUS) 19:44.052
2. Daniel Dal-Bo (ARG) 19:46.138
3. Edward Rutherford (GBR) 19:47.275
11. Fabio Wyss 20:36.220
