Dabs paddlers will paddle their own canoe in Italy
A few paddlers from Dabulamanzi Canoe Club will head to Italy to compete in the World Sprint Championships.
Following exceptional performances at the South African Canoe Sprint Championships recently, several young Dabulamanzi Canoe Club (Dabs) paddlers were selected to represent the country at the 2023 International Canoe Federation Junior and U23 Canoe Sprint World Championships.
Theo Dreyer, Caitlyn Evans and Jordan Klopper were selected to compete in the U18 category, while Alexa Godden was selected for the U23 category in the upcoming championships taking place in Auronzo Di Cadore, Italy, July 5 to 9.
This selection competition was held at Germiston-based Victoria Lake Canoe Club and saw participants from the Western and Eastern Cape, as well as KwaZulu-Natal, Pretoria and Johannesburg, take part.
The three-day event had various races with competitors racing in 200m, 500m, 1 000m, as well as long-distance sprint event of 5 000m. Each heat had nine lanes to sprint in, and nine paddlers lined up to race. Each age group had a few heats to enable all participants in that age group to race against each other and the top three paddlers in each heat participated in the semi-finals, which lead to the finals and the podium position finishers are identified.
Gauteng Canoe Union’s Jennie Dallas said sprinting is the Olympic discipline in canoeing, and therefore potentially the most important of the various canoeing disciplines, which include long-distance marathons, river racing, whitewater slalom and canoe polo.
Kayla Szalay, Tome do Santos, Bruno Cochrane, as well as Theo Dreyer and Jordon Klopper, were also invited to attend the Olympic Hopes Regatta, which takes place in Poznan, Poland, from September 15 to 17.
Fellow canoeist Sikhanyisele Dekeda, who is a member of the Soweto Canoe Club, but trains and participates in the coaching and time trials at Dabs canoe club, also qualified to participate in the regatta. He doubled up with Tome Dos Santos in the K2 (doubles event) to take first place across the finish line in their age group.
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