Mats Wålstedt advances to the freestyle quarterfinals
Wålstedt qualified in 17th place at the 2010 European freestyle kayaking event in Austria, scoring 415 points.
Sweden’s national freestyle kayaking squad was in Austria for the European Championships in June 2010.
Mats Wålstedt went first and opened with a clean Loop, a good confidence boost. His first run earned 125 points. The paddling was solid, although details in some tricks prevented them from scoring.
That opening helped ease the Swedish team’s nerves, and David began his European Championship debut with a broad smile. He also started with a good Loop, apparently the only move that scored, leaving him with 80 points.
Mats improved in his second run, scoring 290 points, including a large McNasty. David’s second run earned 50 points, placing him 43rd out of 58 competitors. Mats’s combined 415 points put him in 17th, safely inside the top-20 qualification cutoff.
The qualifying threshold was 385 points. James Bebbington led with 1,186 points, including an impressive 746 in his second run.
Observations from the team report
The hydraulic was extremely difficult and easy to flush out of. Despite eddies on both sides, many paddlers missed them and ended up too far downstream to paddle back. This was less common among senior men but had a decisive effect in the women’s and junior categories.
Many competitors had very low-scoring runs. In the senior women’s category, six scored zero and eight scored just 10 points. Even world number one Nina Halasova struggled, repeatedly flushing out of the feature.
On June 18, Mats was scheduled to race in the first quarterfinal heat at 10 a.m. The field would be reduced from 20 to 10, with the best two of three runs counting. The men’s semifinal was scheduled for 5 p.m. the same day.
Text from the Swedish national freestyle team’s website.
