Canoeists chasing Olympic dream
The team was selected following national trials in East London in April and has been alternating their training between Homestead and Emmarentia dams.
Two paddlers from the Ekurhuleni Kayak Club (EKC) at Homestead Dam will be chasing the Olympic dream in Hungary next week.
Benonians Nicholas Weeks (25) and Dawie Gerber (32) make up one half of the South African K4 (four-man boat) 500m sprint canoe team which will be competing in the International Canoe Federation (ICF) Sprint World Championships in Szeged, Hungary, from August 21 to 25.
The pair will be sharing their boat in Hungary with Mike Arthur and David Rodrigues, both members of the Dubumanzi Canoe Club based at Emmarentia Dam in Johannesburg.
The four paddlers, who have been together for close to a year, have been engaged in a phased training programme leading up to the official Tokyo 2020 Olympic qualifier.
“The base phase of training involved more volume a few months before the event and we spent a lot more hours on the water. Now, closer to the event, the volume came down and the intensity picked up,” explained Weeks.
“We have literally been in a ‘rehearsal’ phase these past few weeks and focused strongly on race practice. The intervals get less and the focus has shifted to explosive power,” added Gerber.
At the championships, paddlers (in nine lanes) try to out-sprint their opponents in a series of heats and then move on to a semi-final and a final.
ALSO READ: Junior paddlers training for Olympic Hope competition
Aside from positional qualification, the SA foursome will have to beat another continent as the Olympic Body needs representation from four continents as a minimum.
Weeks highlighted the challenges facing local athletes in a fringe sport like canoeing.
“Canoeing is not a big sport in South Africa, but in Europe it’s very big. Hungary is arguably the world capital of canoeing, where the sport is equivalent to rugby here, so this promises to be an incredible event.
“All the people we are racing are full-time, fully funded athletes, but here we work on jobs. It is difficult. They are in a different league in a sense,” said Weeks.
Alphen Park resident Gerber is in the construction industry and Weeks, who lives in Farrarmere, is a geologist by profession.
The two have known one another since Weeks’ junior days when Gerber, who was a full-time professional at the time, took the promising young paddler under his wing.
“Nicholas pushed me to come back and help in this Olympic cycle after a long layoff and got me back into the K4 boat. So, this world champs is actually special – it’s student and teacher in the same boat,” said Gerber.
But, for now at least, it’s all about four men in a boat gelling as a unit on the water and racing towards a place at the greatest sporting spectacle on earth – The Olympic Games.
