SPRINTS is recognised as the most important canoeing discipline as it is the main Olympic discipline. In the 2012 Olympics, Bridgitte Hartley, who dominated the SA Sprint Champs this year again, earned South Africa’s bronze medal for her participation.
The South African Sprint Championships took place over the weekend April 5 and 6 at Nagle Dam in Natal.
Sprint racing covers a variety of distances, some for male and others for female, including 200m, 500m, 1000m, and the long distance events up to 5000m. Races take place in K1 (single kayaks), K2 (doubles) as well as the K4 racing kayaks.
Martin van den Bergh, a member of the Johannesburg Canoe Club based at Wemmer Pan who is studying physiotherapy while concentrating on his canoeing career, also works as a part-time coach at the club.
Martin was the top Gauteng male sprinter at the SA Sprint Championships on the weekend at Nagle Dam in Natal.
Achieving 27.5 points accumulated from the various races he competed in, Van den Bergh finished up with an overall sixth place of the 23 men.
The younger sprinters in Gauteng will be competing at the South African School interprovincial Sprint competition, which takes place over the first weekend in May, in the Eastern Cape.
Van den Bergh was 12th overall in the Men’s Senior age category with Van Wyk 16th on the log.
The road to Rio 2016 will be a long hard battle, but the Elite Sprint Squad training at Roodeplaat Dam hopes to have a good contingent of competitors in due course, as they develop the sprinters with commitment and dedication.
The Academy in Roodeplaat has also been developing a C1 class of sprint racing canoes which is a very difficult discipline.
