During Easter 2010, the USA’s premiere freestyle kayaker Eric “EJ” Jackson came over to Australia to help teach a freestyle kayaking clinic. Eric Jackson was the USA’s top finisher in the 2009 freestyle world championship winning the silver medal. Along with his recent silver, he has won the world championships four times throughout his career.
It was great to have such a highly skilled paddler come out to Australia to teach. The clinic was held for 2 days over the Easter break at Penrith Whitewater Stadium. We learnt a lot during the clinic, both from Eric Jackson as well as Australian paddlers Jez and Gary who were also teaching groups during the weekend.
We worked on a range of things during the weekend. Things like sweep strokes, cartwheels, boof technique, mystery moves, loops, entry moves, phonix monkeys, blunts and probably a heap more that I don’t remember.
The whole weekend had a great atmosphere. A bunch of paddlers came along each day, with everyone helping each other out and just being really friendly and having a good time.
Check out some of the images from the weekend below taken by Linda:
Trip Date: 3 and 4th April 2010