Sprint Worlds – 1000m, 5000m Finals 200m Heats and Semis

August 21st, 2010 |

Today saw some spectacular racing at the Malta lake in Poznan. For starters we had Rachel Cawthorn taking 4th place in the 1000m final, not the result that she would have liked, but she raced very well and should be proud considering the amount of racing she is doing this weekend. Rachel will be fighting it out in the A final of both the 500m K1 and K4 tomorrow, where I am certain she will pick up a medal or two…

Next up is Tim Brabants, I predicted Tim would come top 5, and when I looked at the line up for his ‘semi-final of doom’ on Thursday I was starting to reconsider the top 5 I was hoping for! Tim smashed the Semi coming second to Max Benassi (ITA), not only beating TOMICEVIC (SRB), VAN KOEVERDAN (CAN) and BEN FOUHY (NZL), but his time would have won any of the other semi-finals. Impressive. But can he repeat it in the final? NO PROBLEM! Racing like he did in Beijing, Tim went out all guns blazing, leading it through to around 150m to go when Max Hoff (GER) made his finishing power clear coming from 4th with 250m to go, to just deny Doctor Brabants the gold. But silver is still mind blowing considering Tim didn’t actually have a winters training behind him, and has just got over a back injury, it seems nothing is going to stand in the way of the good doctor, his addiction to regular success is too strong. Tim also competed in the 5000m event, where I was disappointed to find he did not medal, but on second thoughts, 5th is not bad after what was no doubt one of the hardest 1000m races he has ever completed. We shall see how he gets on in the 500m final tomorrow…

Our Men’s K4 (Ben Farrell, Paul Wycherley, Stuart Hastings and Andrew Daniels) Had a good B final, coming 3rd in a time of 3:00.957 just over a second off the Slovakian winners. This should help to brighten up their weekend after the disappointment of not making the A final.
The Men’s K2 of Jon Boyton and Ed Rutherford came 3rd in their 1000m B final this morning which is a very solid performance as they were 1.2 seconds off the winners from Belgium and just 0.7 seconds off Spain who are last years world champions. Their race plan was clearly to go off easier and come through at the end, which worked out for them, 8th after 250m, 5th at 500m, 3rd at 750m and held onto 3rd to the line, good work. I look forward to a similar result in the 500m tomorrow.

The Women’s K2 of Jenna Hawkey and Angela Hanna had not a bad race in the 1000m A final, they were 8th all the way down but just managed to squeeze past the Greeks to take 7th, not bad at all, well done. The girls are racing in the B final of the 500m K2 tomorrow and I expect them to take a top 5 to get into the top 15 in the world.

Lani Belcher, our feisty 5000m fighter, did not have the perfect race today. As predicted she was in the top 3, with only a few hundred meters to go and was looking on for at least a bronze, then in steps the Belorussian who manages somehow to hit Lani’s rudder with her paddle so hard it practically snapped off, not being able to steer Lani tried her best to maintain her 3rd place as the second group was over 100m down on her, but it was too difficult to stay on course and she ended up coming 7th. Lani was very angry initially, but soon realized that there was nothing she could do about it, and is already looking forward to next years 5000m. As for the other girls, well they know they had a very lucky escape, VIVIEN FOLLATH (HUN) took the gold in the end.

British 200m racing, well the boys do like to dominate. Ed McKeever won his Semi easily posting the second fastest time (35.194) streets ahead of rival and Olympic Champion RONALD RAUHE (GER). The K2 of Jon Schofield and Liam Heath also won their heat, with the fastest qualifying time (32.005) ahead of, well, everyone! Lets keep it that way for the final please guys! Jess Walker raced the K1 200m for the women, but was just pipped to qualifying for the A final by YU ZHOU (CHN) by 0.14 seconds. She is one of the fastest qualifier for the B final though, so I predict Jess will deliver a win in the B final, putting her top 10 in the world.

There was some other racing today, the women’s C1 200m event. I was watching this on Eurosport with complete dismay (and slight embarrassment) as the first heat took more that 10 minutes to get lined up in the start buckets. In the end they just started the race with only 3 of the 7 girls actually in the buckets! As Eurosport only have a set amount Live broadcast time, this meant that we didn’t see the men’s K2 200m semi-finals!

Now don’t get me wrong, I’m all for equality etc, but are we not lacking in numbers in women’s Kayak? Why create this joke event? I can’t see any reason why Jo Public would want to have any involvement in this sport after the shamefully uncomfortable show that was put on today. Which bright spark decided this was a good idea? and surely after the poor attendance and generally off putting performance of women’s C1 at the sprint world cups earlier this year, there must have been suggestion of removing it from the World Championship programme? SHEESH!

Apologies to TIANIAN LI (CHN) and LAURENCE VINCENT-LAPOINTE (CAN) who actually looked like they could paddle a C1 properly, if there were 20 women like this, maybe it could work, but the ICF shouldn’t just ‘give it a shot’ at the Worlds until you know there are 20 women capable of doing 200m in less that 15 minutes.

Stay tuned for tomorrows write up. And stay up to date with Race Pace on twitter.