Georgia trip/Bzuhzha qualification

While our good friends are carefully selecting rivers without waters in the Pyrenees, we face another steep ditch running at a healthy flow in beautiful Georgia. Some guys at the campsite tell us we are lucky as a few days earlier, there was even much more water, seems they had a few epics even without Nirjhara crew around...

Evening before, Egor had informed us about a formal opening ceremony of the first ever WW Extreme race in the capital of Insjoetia. We assumed that was a joke but in the morning we are effectively driving down the valley in a large kayak convoy, finding the city center square completely reserved for us kayak bums. Follows a real ceremony in old Russian style, welcoming us athletes and wishing us good luck in the competition, now that's the way to start a good day of kayaking!

Back at the campsite, after course registration, we decide to run the long race that starts at the campsite and ends at the beginning of the qualification run. Due to some faffing around, in the end we only have 15min left to clean the long race and make it to qualification and a quite nervous Egor who accompanies us as race organizer warns us, no mistakes guys. I guess, this was the run that something finally broke between Egor and team Nirjhara although the scene of 2 guys trying vainly to pull out a swamped rental boat from the river was quite funny...

Qualification was about 500m of Russian flat water that still caused some swims and surely was not too easy to get a clean run down. Ward had 2 descent runs that put him 19th in overall ranking in a quite strong field of about 60 paddlers in total. I ended up in 23rd position after a mess up towards the end in my first run and a roll at the start of my second run but as a lucky looser, still qualified for the long race. No bad performance of team Chaos!
In the evening, there are hints of a Russian party but nothing too extreme, we are all athletes after all...