Local paddlers take on the mighty Berg River Canoe Marathon
VLC paddlers showed they have what it takes to compete in top river races.
A number of local paddlers took up the challenge of the longest canoe river race in Southern Africa between July 13 and 16.
The Berg River Canoe Marathon is a gruelling race, which saw competitors paddling from Paarl to Velddrif in the Western Cape in freezing mid-winter conditions.
The race was first hosted in 1962 and was run for the 44th time this year – an epic adventure over four days, covering 240km of winding sections and beautiful scenic mountains.
One-hundred-and-nine boats were recorded in the results, which consisted of eight from Gauteng, five from the Eastern Cape, 17 from KwaZulu-Natal and the rest of the field from the Western Cape.
The top three Gauteng paddlers, who finished this gruelling challenge with daily race distances of 62, 46, 75, and 60km respectively, were from the Victoria Lake Canoe Club (VLC), based at Germiston Lake.
The first person from Gauteng to cross the finish line was Roy Clegg, a regular at the event, in 22nd place, while the next to finish was u-23 Katiso Hlahatsi, who came in 38th, an impressive finish by the youngster on his second attempt to keep up with the highly experienced and conditioned canoeists, even finishing in front of VLC’s top paddler and coach Richard Cele, who was the third person from Gauteng to finish, in 41st position.
Their overall times for the four-day period were 20 hours 8 minutes, 21 hours 42 minutes, 21 hours 49 minutes respectively.
Colin Ledwaba and Grant Conlon from the club were also in the eight Gauteng finishers to complete the epic race.
Hlahatsi has been paddling in the club’s youth development programme since he was 12 years old and he finished the Berg in the u-23 category at 22 years of age.
The young man, born and schooled in Katlehong, attended Ponego Secondary School where he matriculated, however, he has not been able to secure further education although he hopes to sign up at EWC College for a marketing course.
Some paddlers excel best at short distance sprints, while others find their forte in the longer distance endurance event – the Berg proved that Hlahatsi has the stamina required to master these highly demanding distances.
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