by Adam Burgess GBR

Prague World Cup has to be my favourite races on the international circuit, and I know for a fact that this opinion is shared by a lot of the other athletes!
A course that is so usable for training combining sections with easy repeatability, always lots of training gates out, and some super tasty upstreams makes for a great training environment but also some awesome fun. When you add a race atmosphere like no other, great commentary and crowd, and of course the food! (.....the FOOD!) It really is a race I look forward to and I'm already looking forward to the next one!

As for performance... I think I did OK. But maybe only 'OK'. We never really highlighted this one as a real target for a special performance as we wanted to prioritise training at this time of year. So I guess I wasn't feeling 100% fresh and up for it. That said, I went in with a solid plan and knew what I wanted to come away with from a 'process' point of view. I qualified in 20th after heats with a solid/controlled run fast enough for 9th but picked up a clumsy 2sec penalty right at the end hence the 20th place finish. Still, safely through to Semi-Finals. Unfortunately I couldn't break into the top 10 final on this occasion in the semis. I made a few errors around the middle section where a lot of the other competitors were finding trouble. Managed to not drop any further though and finished 20th again as a final result. Not bad, not great, but a decent enough start to my World Cup campaign especially considering the training phase I'm in.

'Silver Lining' - Along with my teammates David Florence and Ryan Westley, we raced together very well to take a silver in the team runs. Really enjoyed racing teams and it was great to hear the crowd get behind us! I was happy to put the mistakes I made in the semi final to bed too by correcting the errors I had made earlier! This backs up our Bronze medal from the European Champs and is setting us up nicely to go for Gold in front of a home crowd at Lee Valley in September! Bring it on!

I'll probably ease off a little leading into World Cup 4/5 and see if I can produce a performance there but of course the big one I'm aiming to peak at now is the Senior World Championships at home in Lee Valley! Onto the next one, Liptovsky Mikulas World Cup 3rd-5th July!