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By the time many of you receive this mail, the ICF World Ocean Racing Championships will be done and dusted.
The single ski championships was originally meant to have been held on Saturday, but was changed to Thursday due to predicted better wind conditions.
The Perth Doctor, a race of 27km from Rottnest Island back to Sorrento Beach (Perth) was held last Saturday in very atypical weather conditions, with very little wind and extremely hot temperatures.
Many of the local paddlers did not even bother to start.
The surfski culture over here is very different to that which we have in SA. If there is not enough wind to create decent downwind conditions, many do not bother to start. If there is no wind, over half the entrants don't bother to pitch. If there is a headwind, you will battle to get enough paddlers to fill the podium.
With this in mind, the race organisers took the decision to utilise the 3-day "window period" that is allowed in the ICF rules.
It has resulted in the strange scenario where we will be holding the opening ceremony after the event.
SA dominated the World Championships in Portugal last year, winning the majority of medals on offer.
By the look of the depth of the field for this year, we will have our work cut out to repeat the task.
The depth of the field, in almost all of the categories is massive.
Local Aussie, Cory Hill, looks like the man to beat in the men's category. Hank, the brothers Fenn, Mark Keeling, Nic Notten, and defending champion Kenny Rice, will be looking to ensure that the SA anthem is played at the medal ceremony. Uli Hart is one of our best hopes of a gold in the U23 section.
Jemma Smith will start as favourite in the women's category, but will be challenged strongly by Michelle Burn, Melanie Van Niekerk and Kira Bester. Kira will have an excellent chance of winning the U23's, where she will be joined by Saskia Hockly who should also podium.
Our junior world marathon champion, Holly Smith, has been giving the locals a bit of a klap in the opening races, and it will be unlikely that she is not on one of the steps of the podium in the junior category.
Our junior boys, on the other hand, have a mountain to climb against the potent locals.
The nations cup is also up for grabs, with points being awarded to the first 3 positions in each category. This will definitely end up being a tight race between SA and Aus.
The race starts (started for some of you) at 7.30 SA time.
Some more fantastic news is that our very small sprint team have just returned from the Africa sprint champs and Olympic qualifier, which was held in Nigeria, where they have secured Olympic quota places for two boats. Esti Van Tonder and Helen Jansen van Vuuren won the 500m K2, and Nic Weeks and Chrisjan Coetzee won the men's 500m K2.
Subject to SASCOC approval, this means that we should have 4 athletes representing SA in Paris next year.
This is a magnificent opportunity to elevate the discipline of sprinting and to ignite the passion in other youngsters to emulate the feat. |
