SA Sprint Kayakers' Blog

Saturday, 29 May 2010

Silver for Bridge

In the K1 womens 1000m A final Bridge claims second.

At the 250 and 500 she was holding strong with the 4 front boats and in the last 250 pulls out to finish in an impressive second place.

This excitement was joined by a brilliant race by Zoli's men's K4. In their B final where they were first out the blocks and led the race through to the 750 mark. They held it well and crossed the line in third, an impressive threat to other top crews.

200s

This morning started with a 30 minute delay due to the weather which gave time for the nerves to build... The 200m distance this year has had a massive turn out with five heats (of 9 boats each) for the mens and women’s K1 and mens' K2 events.

Greg and Stu raced hard in the K1 heats making it through to semis and will race together in the C final tomorrow afternoon. This was followed by the K2s. Mike and Shaun were excited for the challenge of racing again at a venue that they won silver at last year, but today they didn’t manage the brilliant start that is typical of their racing. They came 4^th in their semi and will be racing the B final tomorrow along with team mates Greg and Ryan Louw. The brothers won their heat and came 3^rd in their semi final.

Jen narrowly missed the A final for the womens K1 which is basically raw talent as has been sick this week and only 3 months into sprint training after an extended break following Beijing.

Calvin had an impressive PB today in C1 200m and is also newly back into training after Beijing, and is still training under Hungarian Legend Nandor Almasi.

To appreciate how fast these guys are going over 200m, see the detailed results on http://results.mkksz.hu/en/timetable/

Friday, 28 May 2010

Interesting start to Day 2

Greg's boat waiting for him on the side of the course this morning. With all the thunder and lightening, there might be a delay to the start of the day. No one's on the water yet and there s only an hour until the first race.

5 Hundreds and Thousands

After the 500m heats our 7 semis were raced within 75 minutes of each other! This is why I think that supporting these races is more tiring than being in the boat...

After the hard day of racing we have the following events to look forward to over tomorrow and Sunday:
Bridgitte: K1 1000m A final, K1 500m A final.

Calvin: C1 1000m B final

Jen and Tiff: K2 500m B final

Nick: K1 1000m B final, K1 500m B final

Len: K1 1000m B final

Shaun and Mike: K2 500m A final

Cam and Stu: K2 500m B final

Chrisjan, PW, Fouche and Gavin: K4 1000m B final

That is an amazing effort!!!!

Special mention must go to Jen and Tiff who have maybe had three training sessions in the K2 together before they lined up in the starting blocks. They only narrowly missed the A final in their K2 500m semi going through comfortably to the B final.

But before we tackle the list above we must do 200m heats and semis which are schelduled for tomorrow morning.

The end of the day tomorrow will be the long distance K1 5000m race. Where Fish legend Len and Cape paddler Gavin are racing in the mens and fellow Cape paller Lindi and Tiff are racing the womens.