By Ben

We all awoke today with a long day ahead of us. It started with an early morning run around the Austrian countryside followed by some stretching back at our temporary home. After showering and breakfast we set off for Solkan, the site of the Junior World Championships. On the way we spotted many castles as we clocked speeds maxing out at 150km/h. It appeared that some of us were traveling in luxury as others in one of the vans suffered from a lack of grunt in its air conditioner and we arrived in a lather of sweat. When we arrived in Solkan we were greeted by good news as the soccer was displayed on a big screen and at that stage it was scoreless. Unfortunately within the last 10 seconds of injury time Australia conceived a penalty leading to an Italian victory. We didn't let that spoil the moment as we hit the water, for some of us, the first time on the Soca River. Well, what can we say, the water is that beautiful blue that you would imagine in dreams and here we are in our boats, tearing it apart with our goals in mind. For most of us we noticed the jetlag and felt a bit flat, but we put that behind us as we began to learn and feel the features, and discover the rhythm of the water. When we wrapped up our session we discovered two of us had been stung by wasps or bees and another dragging themselves upside down over a rock, not once but twice. We hastily drove our 400 metres back to our hotel, The Sabotin for a very filling meal. With dinner under wraps and the sun still shining, it was time for us to hit the hay.

See you tomorrow for the next instalment, do not forget to check out the pics.