ISTO 2004
Irish Student Trampoline Open

This Easter, Rob, Suzy Katherine and I made up the Cambridge team at ISTO 2004. We arrived in Dublin, the city hosting this year’s competition, early morning on Thursday 1st April. Having woken up really early to get the flight there we were all rather tired, hence the day consisted of generally relaxing, lounging around and having a brief explore of the city. That evening, we met some of our fellow competitors in the pub (which took us ages to find!) then hit the sack, ready for the next day's events.

Friday evening was the general warm up for the competition; our first chance to check out the trampolines, as well as the competition! We set about practising our routines and one or two other moves. Some of the other competitors were using the session for somewhat more recreational purposes, however. We saw one guy attempt (and complete) fourteen consecutive double bounce rolls. That's a back drop, over your head twice, to back drop again for those of you not familiar with the terminology, only he did it fourteen times in a row. There were also quite a lot of double somersaults going on around the sports hall, certainly not the norm that you come to expect at a typical bouncing session down here! All this was very little compared to Saturday's performances.....

So, onto the actual competition itself. There were a lot of people competing. Each of us had about thirty competitors in our own categories, except Suzy, who was up against about seventy others I think. There were a lot of novices competing. This competition was running throughout the day, and is one we would quite like to have more of a presence in next year.

We all competed early in the afternoon and things went quite well all round. Rob managed another great pair of half blues standards routines, including a much improved back somersault barani link. Suzy completed a solid pair of routines, though we think she was cheated by 0.1 on her tariff mark! Katherine's routines were, as ever, wonderfully neat and were also comfortably into the half blues quota. I think there are going to be a couple club members achieving said blues status next year at BUSA. As for me, I got on, did a few moves, going for the more difficult voluntary routine ala cuppers, and ended up scoring much better than I expected in the end.

After we had all competed, the competition moved onto the elite category. Here, I saw some of the most impressive (and somewhat scary) action I think I've seen on the trampoline. Highlights included a routine which started with a triple front somersault with a half twist out and a voluntary routine which tariffed at 14.0 I think. Considering Alastair's Varsity routine tariffed at 4.0, I think you can all get a fairly good idea about how impressive this feat was. The worst part was, a lot of them made it look easy!

On Sunday, the less serious competitions started. That said, the first event was the serious syncro. This consisted of two people completing routines on side by side trampolines whilst keeping in time with each other. It was wonderful to watch. Rob and Katherine entered, and their routine went very well, until they got a bit lost at the end! This is certainly something worth practising at sessions for next year I think. After the serious syncro was the silly syncro, which again, was most enjoyable to watch. My favourite routines were the Scooby Doo routine, the Rupert Bear routine and the Super Heroes routine. Basically, any of the photos with people in silly costumes are from this event. We're already working on our idea for next year's competition.

On Sunday afternoon was the ISTO Gladiators event. This was a bunch of silly games, such as mat sliding, (which some of you will be familiar with), mat racing, cartwheel racing and a TV's Gladiators style duel. We were joined by Phillip from the German university at the competition, and though we didn't manage to place in the top four, I think we managed a pretty solid performance.

Well, that was the competition over for this year. We all were very pleased with how well we placed in the end and I would say it was definitely a very successful trip. Between competing, we took in several sights, including the Jameson distillery where Suzy became a qualified whiskey taster, the Castle, and a lovely costal walk, where we saw some seals, which was quite exciting. We also took in a fair amount of alcohol, especially Rob who got somewhat drunk after competition on Saturday, danced the night away with one of the girls on the ISTO committee (wink-wink-nudge-nudge) then refused to step on any lines on the way back to the hostel.

All in all, it was a fantastic weekend and a lot of fun was had by all. This is definitely an event well worth going to and I hope a lot of you will be joining us there next year!

James


Cambridge Results

Full results (up soon)

ISTO 2004 photos

ISTO 2004 video gallery