Oxbow Beach Tour 2007 Report

The Oxbow Beach Tour was held in four venues along the Belgium coast.

5 Crawley members decided to drive to Belgium for this tour. 3 competitors, Alistair Reid, Dave Butler and Rory Hopcraft. With them for good or bad were two trainee craft handlers, Paddy and Jonny from Northern Ireland.
Upon arrival we promptly discovered that most of the other competitors were representing their national teams. It was at this point that we decided to investigate and found a local beach bar.

L to R: Jonny, Alistair, Paddy, Dave, Rory

The events comprised of 4 Double Ironman Races (1 a day, Friday to Monday) and a different Sprint Event each Day.

The first days' event was quite rough and turned out to be extremely eventful. Alistair caught the wave of the day to run out the water with a massive lead after the first swim leg. He kept his lead after the board leg only to be thwarted by a missing ski and confused handler *cough cough Paddy* when coming around for the final leg. Dave and Rory both struggled in the tough conditions but both did brilliantly to finish the race with many other top competitors dropping out.

Click here for all the pictures.

The next two days we saw great weather, with the water being near lake-like. The swims were the order of the days, being quite far and out of proportion to the reletively short craft legs. You could see the swimmers in the field by the scattered smiles on the start line. Rory was consistent and had a personal battle all weekend, putting in some amasing craft legs while battling with a particularly large German. Dave had an awesome race on Sunday beating Alistair for the first time. His swimming was near spectacular. And in true fashion, he rubbed it in, and yes, it did hurt.

Dave's joy didnt last long as Alistair proved to be the daddy with an awesome race on flat water on the Monday. He claims it was the go faster beer the night before.

A shorten version of the results relating to out members are below.

Competitor	Blankenberge 11th	Oostende 12th	Westende 13th	Oostdiumkerke 14th	Overall
Alistair Reid	10th	14th	16th	10th	12th
Dave Butler	15th	15th	12th	19th	15th
Rory Hopcraft	14th	19th	22nd	22nd	21st

In the sprint races we saw some serious racing with extreme cut-off's to go through to the finals. We saw some good, albeit very tired performances after the ironman races earlier in the day.

There is a bit of a story about the flags event. We were all persuaded to enter by a certain pair of jovial swedes, Oscar and Steffi. This, as it tends to do, swelled us all with an intense competitiveness. In the first run of the 3rd heat, Dave fell victim to Alistair, who in turn was the victim himslef in the next run to a dodgy Spaniard. Special mention has to go to Jonny, who managed to qualify for the semi-finals without having to do a single run. Rory and Paddy both did brilliantly in a very competitive event, Rory eventually going on to be placed 8th in the final.
Dave had a cracker in the surf swim and was placed 10th, while in the last event of the tour Alistair won the board race.

The after party was a bit of learning experience, literally. We spent half the evening learning new drinking games in spanish. Oviously we lost, but we at least tried nonetheless.

So after a 6 day trip full of serious competition and few hungry bums, i can speak for all of us when i say we all had a great time and will defintely be heading back next year, hopefully with a larger team.

Best Wishes
Alistair Reid