Freestyle kayaking is all about getting out on the river and using particular features that you come across to make you (and your) boat perform tricks. Whitewatery obstacles such as waves, holes, eddylines and rocks are perfect platforms to let your imagination run wild and think up of a new trick to show off!

The very first freestylers had great long boats and the moves of the day were huge Popouts, Pirouettes and Paddle spins. Competitions sprung up to see who was getting the biggest popouts and the neatest pirouettes - and then who could party the hardest! This was the basis of the modern sport of Freestyle competition which now, almost twenty years later, has become the fastest growing branch of the paddlesport family tree.

In today's Freestyle events competitors are allowed two 30 or 45second runs on the feature (a wave or a hole) and are scored under two headings, technical and variety, Technical scores are allocated to moves depending on how vertical they are with a score of 1 for flat moves and 4 for fully vertical manoeuvres. The variety score is basically how many different tricks a competitor can pull off within their run. Moves with colourful names such as Helix, Donkey Flip, Tricky Woo and Space Godzilla to name a few are allocated a score, depending on the difficulty involved, ranging from 0.25 to 1.5. After the competitors runs their scores are added up and the variety is multiplied by the technical to give the overall score.

But the core of freestyle has always remained the same. Getting out on the river with your friends, finding some new feature to jump into and figuring out what cool tricks you can pull off.

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