Kayak Team to tackle Olympic qualification

CANOE RACING NEW ZEALAND INC.

KAYAKING SQUAD TO TACKLE OLYMPIC QUALIFIER

22 July 2012
The New Zealand Kayak Team is set to tackle Olympic qualification when it attends the 2011 ICF Canoe Sprint World Championships in Szeged, Hungary, 18th - 21st August.

The New Zealand Team will be targeting 6 events with 10 athletes for outright qualification for the London Olympics:

Women’s K1 200m Lisa Carrington

Women’s K1 500m Teneale Hatton

Women’s K2 500m Erin Taylor & Lisa Carrington

Men’s K1 1000m Ben Fouhy

Men’s K2 1000m Darryl Fitzgerald & Steven Ferguson

Men’s K4 1000m Fred Teear, Scott Bicknell, Troy Burbidge & Liam O’Loughlin.

The team attended the World Cups in May and used the World Cups as an opportunity to trial various combinations and race plans. The squad coaching team (Gordon Walker, Grant Restall, Ian Ferguson) is feeling confident in their entries and the various athletes have had some very heavy training over the last three months, including their recent team training camp on the Gold Coast.
The women are heading away as favourites, especially the Women’s K1 200m with Lisa Carrington winning Gold at World Cup 3 in Germany in May. Along with K2 partner Erin Taylor, the girls spent three weeks fine-tuning their K2 partnership in the Gold Coast, with promising results.

To qualify outright the K1’s need to finish in the top 8 at these World Champs. The K2’s need to finish in the top 6 and the K4 needs to finish top 10. These are very high standards in a very competitive field, with one other possible opportunity for qualifying K1s and K2s during the Oceania Champs in Australia in March 2012. The men’s K4 will not have that luxury however so it’s “do or die” in Hungary and with these boats averaging 22kph this is a very fast and furious event. The K4 has been receiving some extra training from team-mate Ben Fouhy and are pleased with their progress. As a new K4 combination they are largely untested, but all well versed in the World Champs environment and are paddling well together as a solid crew.

Ben Fouhy’s own training has been showing much of his old form, with him consistently hitting the training numbers he knows point towards a successful World Championships showing. He is intimately aware of the depth of the K1 1000m field he will face in Hungary, and all indications point to a world-class performance.

The team is leaving at different times to allow for individuals to adapt to time zones and seasonal variations but will all be training in the Czech Republic together. On 14th August the team will travel to Szeged in Hungary with racing starting on the 18th.

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