CRNZ Canoe Sprint National Championships & ICF Oceania Champ

17 February 2013

Canoe Racing New Zealand Inc

CRNZ Canoe Sprint National Championships & ICF Oceania Championships

Sunday

Day Three of the Oceania Championships dawned with a strong trial wind blowing which made the heats of the 200m racing interesting for the paddlers. As the day progressed the wind dropped leaving a beautiful, sunny, still day and hence continuing the great weather trend for these championships.

In the open men’s events we saw the continuing dominance of Kenny Wallace from Australia who won both the K1 and K2 200m events. Wallace’s K2 partner Lachlan Tame made a clean sweep for the Australian’s by gaining second place in the K1 200. New Zealand Team member Scott Bicknell was third and first Kiwi.

A highlight of the Championship for many of the people watching was seeing Olympian Lisa Carrington in her specialist event, the 200m race. Lisa blasted out of the start and quickly accelerated to maximum speed within 10 seconds and moved clear of the field. Lisa won the race in a blistering sub 40 second time. The time was faster than any of her Olympic times. The next two places were filled by Australian paddlers with the next New Zealander being Rachael Dodwell who was chased by her team mate Jaimee Lovett. After Lovett saw our rising hope in the 200m event Aimee Fisher. Aimee is an Under 18 competitor and is already making her presence felt in the open ranks.

In the open women’s K2 event we saw the Australians turn the tide on the New Zealanders winning the 200m race while the New Zealanders had won the 500m the day before. However this was a close race with Dodwell and Lovett finishing only 0.08 of a second behind the winners In third place was the Under 23 pairing of Welch and Imire who have achieved some improved results over the Championships.

Racing throughout these championships has been outstanding with 230 paddlers competing for NZ title honours and the U18, U23 and Open paddlers also competing for Oceania medals.

ENDS

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