T-wave Rodeo

Over the past few weeks Ireland's water levels have been pretty high but this was the perfect opportunity to hit the road and travel up the country to one of Ireland best waves in Roscommen called T-wave. A couple of friends had organised a fun rodeo when they heard the levels were up, a great way to kick start the winter sessions. It was a long drive up and one of the coldest mornings I've seen this year.

We arrived at the car park to find a fantastic turn out for such small notice with over 30 competitors. The wave wasn't at a particularly ideal level but it didn't really matter as it was my first time back in a boat in over a month and first time back at T-wave in over two years so it was a great way to get a break from the books.

The wave forms just at the bottom of a 13gate weir on the Shannon river. It can vary fro

m a nice bounce wave to a large trashy hole, on the day of the rodeo it was a mixture of three holy waves. The best thing about this feature is its large eddy that acts as a huge conveyor belt that will take from falling off the wave right back up to the start.

With a quick briefing and a few practice runs the competition got off to a start with the juniors.

It was a Jam format, 15 minutes, 6 paddlers per heat, top moves counted and a final in each class

I was in the second heat with Colin Wong, It got off to a good start with a helix and a few blunts but wasted a good bit of time trying to catch the wave on the far bank. Colin also started off well laying down some blunts and back blunts putting him in and 4 others into the finals.

The final saw a range of hole and wave moves been thrown down from phonixs to donkey flips but at the end of the day Tom Dumphy took first place with some impressive pistol flips. full results are below

Senior Mens prelims Expert: Tom Dunphy 2. Barry Loughnane 3. Ronnie Brennan 4. Colin Wong 5. Andrew Regan 6. Eoin Keyes 7. Concy Bredin 8. Dave 9. Adrian Durrant 10 Orky 11. Eoin Farrell 12. Bosco 13.Snax 14.Mark Carrol 15. Kevin Niland 16. Colm Healy

It was a Great day - fair play to Barry and Andrew for putting on a good show and Adrian Durrant for judging! hopefully it will come back again next year, and it was a great way to spark off talk of other shotgun events that will be taking place around the country. Next up the flesk race.

some of the photos of the comp here