Stoney Park, Port Macquarie, NSW
Wow, what a great Nationals this year! Stoney Park hosted us over the Easter long weekend with 5 days of action in Port Macquarie, NSW. TWSA sure know how to put on an event & make the Disabled Division very welcome. Everybody was helpful & supportive and the NSW division ran it very well. Both lakes were used, one for slalom & the other for the trick & jump events. Having easy access to both lakes made it really very handy for all skiers. On Saturday night there was a night slalom & jump showdown plus an AC/DC cover band afterwards. Malibu supplied the competition boats and were great to ski behind. They also had three new boats on display. Food vans kept everyone well fed and they even had helicopter rides!
Now onto the competition! The forecast was for showers with rain periods but the gods were good to us and gave us great sunny weather 80% of the time. It was windy at times with jump event being moved from Friday to Saturday. It rained most of Monday but luckily the Disabled Division had already finished competing by then.
It was great to see Ian Hickmott back on the water after 18 months in hospital. He skied well and achieved a PB in the trick & slalom events. He had been practising his passes while in bed for so long.
New MP3 skier Jason Hills put in a solid performance in his first competition and exceeded the world criteria in all 3 events.
New MP1 Skier Vaughn Hogan broke the long-standing Australian slalom record on Thursday and again on Friday. He went through the course at 34km then into 37km. A great effort!
Jason Sleep broke his own slalom record at running 6 buoys at 9.75 metres. He had the boat roaring along while flying through the course on a very short line! He then had to try the outer course as there were no more shortenings.
Scott Wintle put in a solid performance as always getting a PB in Slalom. It could have been better had he known about the rule whereby you have to stop after every pass or spin after every pass. Unfortunately, he was a bit tired after four continuous passes and needed to rest which the rules do not allow for.
Belinda Sidman matched her record of 3 @ 52km in slalom and was only 20 points off her trick record. Not bad for a year off the water!
There were several disabled skiers absent this year. Bushy Brown, Darryl Hoyle, Jamie McDonald and Robin Cook could not make it due to injury & other reasons. Noel was kept busy & tied up all weekend in the slalom tower and last but not least, Glen (JN) Sidman (Junior Noel) had big boots to fill but did exceptionally well in his role of Team Manager. He was kept very busy and had everything on track and running like clockwork!
The Australian Team was announced at presentation night and team members are now looking forward to competing at the 2013 Disabled Worlds in Milan Italy this coming August. So now the team has to hook in and train through winter to show the world we are the ‘Flying Kangaroo’s’.