Kayaking: Sperling triumphs with magic tricks

He might be slightly vague on which river is hosting the national secondary schools' slalom champs, but 16-year-old Otumoetai College paddler Andre Sperling knows his back air blunt from his McNasty and his donkey flip from his helix.

Sperling is the New Zealand under-18 freestyle kayaking national champion after pulling out his array of oddly-named manoeuvres on the renowned Fulljames Rapid just below the Huka Falls.

Fulljames has been the venue for extreme paddlers from around the world to test their skills and, unlike whitewater slalom, where paddlers race against the clock to traverse a series of gates down a rapid, freestyle is judged on a 45-second ride and acrobatic moves on a standing wave.

Fresh from winning the North Island under-18 canoe slalom title on the Tarawera River, Sperling wowed the judges with his fluidity and tricks in the freestyle.

"There's not that many freestyle events around here, mainly because there's not that many rapids with good enough waves, but it's heaps of fun and a good break from always focusing on slalom," Sperling said.

All the freestylers tap into YouTube to bag their latest tricks and watch with envy as overseas paddlers get huge air from their monster rapids, with the waves formed when the main river flow hits a rock formation and deflects upward.

In the preliminary rounds, each competitor gets three 45sec runs on the wave, with their best two scores counting.

In semi-finals paddlers get two runs, with the best one counted, and in the final, the best of three runs is used.

Sperling said it wasn't necessarily an advantage to cram as much into 45 seconds as was humanly possible.

"You try and get as many tricks in as you can in 45 seconds, which goes pretty quick, but it's hard to stay on a wave for that long. If you stay on, it's all good but you lose time if you slip off.

"It's all about variety as well because you only get each trick counted once. If you keep repeating the same trick it doesn't mean much. Guys are trying to make new tricks up and you generally think of something, practice it and throw it down and see what happens. Sometimes there's some pretty crazy tricks happening but generally it's the same kinds of tricks."

Sperling spent just over three weeks in February in Sydney on the Olympic slalom site near Penrith, training and competing with the national under-23 squad.

He is ranked No.3 under-18 K1 paddler in the country behind Tauranga's Boys' College's Cole O'Connor-Stratton and Finn Butcher (Dunstan High School).