This is me trying out my new boat on moving water for the first time. It’s a Vajda Sting, just like the green one I had before. Vajda had only made one 350cm model before that (K1350), and I learned to paddle in a 400cm boat at first (A Galasport Strike). I still paddle both of my stings and haven’t bought a new slalom boat since then.
This is an artificial course in Huningue/Hüningen, France, right at the Swiss and German border. This is where I really learned to paddle. I started in 2005, in early summer when the local club accepted new people. I absolutely loved it right from the start and did a performance test in autumn the same year, where I did well enough to get into the county squad. I should say that the region I’m from, Saarland, is the smallest German county/ Bundesland (there are a few city-states, but apart from those), so the stakes weren’t all that high, but it meant I got to travel to this course close to every weekend that winter. I didn’t have proper kit yet and remember borrowing lots of things and getting frostbite anyway. I couldn’t roll yet, and I tried really hard, so I was swimming all the time.
