The New Zealand kayak team heads into World Cup 2 this week, 20-22 May in Racice, Czech Republic, with some clear goals after some strong competition in Poznan.
In World Cup 1, in Poznan Poland, the overall team performance was promising, giving a good start to the three World Cup events and providing some realistic learning curves for the team. The top performances came from the K2 combo of Steven Ferguson and Darryl Fitzgerald in the K2 500m A final, coming 5th, 5 seconds off the Portuguese winners.
Troy Burbidge and Liam O'Loughlin finished 3rd in their K2 B Final, fielding a competitive time that could have seen them in the A Final.The women's K4 (Dodwell, Carrington, Hatton and Taylor) had to settle for 6th place after a strong performance in the A final and the K2 combo of Lisa Carrington and Erin Taylor placed 7th - 5.4 seconds off the winning Polish combination, but only 2.6 seconds off the second placed Austrians.
At full strength, these teams are going to be ones to reckon with, these gutsy performances coming just 5 days off the plane and some nasty jet-lag. With minimising fatigue a priority, the coaching staff has reduced the work load during racing in order to target the Olympic events where they have the strongest possibility of qualifying for the London Olympics. They have gained a lot of confidence from some key training sessions which show good improvement and prove the women's and men's K2s are tracking well for qualification.
The Racice races will have two Women's K2s entered in the 500m: Teneale Hatton with Rachael Dodwell and Lisa Carrington with Erin Taylor; and two men's crews of Liam O'Loughlin with Troy Burbidge and Steve Ferguson with Darryl Fitzgerald. The young guns U23 mens K4 flew in to join the team over the weekend and will be competing in the K4 1000m and also individually in the K1s (200m Scott Bicknell, Jasper Bats; 1000m Sam Wilson, Zac Franich).
NZ Programme shown below.
Full Competition Programme: http://www.racice2011.com/program
