Toad's Wildwater Adventures

Welcome to the kayaking blog of Ben Maynard. I am a 26 year old from Tasmania, Australia, and am currently seeking sponsorship. Present sponsors are the Tasmanian Institute of Sport, City of Greater Geelong/Bis-Sport, Dagger Australia, Geelong Canoe Club, Kayak4Play, and TEVA (links below). After top 20 individual results and a top 5 team result in 2006, my goals are top 10 individually and a teams medal at the next Wildwater World Championships in Italy 2008. Come along for the ride...

Saturday, October 07, 2006

Welcome to Toad's Wildwater Adventures


Hi all,

My name's Ben Maynard, toad to my family and friends. Actually, my family and friends is one of the reasons I'm setting up this blog - instead of sending lots of emails (or forgetting to) I can update everyone with the blog and save lots of time!

Anyways, the other reason of course is kayaking. I've been kayaking since 1996 and seem to travel around a lot as a result of that and see lots of stuff that not everyone has the chance to, so I thought I'd share that with you. I have been competing in the sport of wildwater kayaking at an international level since 1997, representing Australia as a junior that year and '98, and as a senior also in '98, '99, '00, '04 and '06. I'm just getting serious about it again after university between '00 and '03 going crazy. Hopefully with this blog I can share with you my goals, competitions, experiences, highs and lows, and some great images of some of the best scenery in the world. In a lighthearted way of course!! Also some of my mates have set up blogs themselves and I've gotta keep up with the times......

Wildwater kayaking to me is the ultimate sport, but at the same time one of the simplest. Person, kayak, river, stopwatch. Competitiors time-trial down a stretch of river for anywhere between 2 ("sprint") and 20 ("classic") minutes. How you get from A to B on the river is up to you! Wildwater combines incredible fitness demands, finesse and skill like few other sports. It's all action!

The picture above is from this years Wildwater World Cup, race 2 (sprint) in Mezzana, Italy. The day before I had finished 19th in race 1, the classic race, my personal best placing and something to improve upon in the next few years!

A big thank-you to my current sponsors:

Tasmanian Institute of Sport - http://www.tis.tas.gov.au/
Bis-Sport - http://www.geelong.vic.gov.au/Index.asp
Dagger Australia - http://www.dagger.com/default.asp
Geelong Canoe Club - http://www.geelongcanoeclub.org.au/
Kayak4Play - http://www.kayak4play.com.au/

Hopefully I can add a few more to this list soon!

OK, hope you enjoy the blog and stay tuned for some more posts.

Ben.

posted by Ben @ 2:52 PM