Some of the world’s finest marathon paddlers will gather within the shadow of the Langeberg mountains this weekend for the two-day Breede River Canoe Marathon.
The two-day race will resolve the Western Cape K2 River titles for 2022 and supply a number of the elite stars with a final costume rehearsal earlier than the marathon world championships on the finish of the month.
Low river makes for a difficult race
After a moist begin to the top of winter that performs host to the K2 paddling season on the Breede River, the rains have stopped and the extent of the river subsided steadily, forcing the host membership to make some adjustments to the primary stage, and including on a pattern of the form of racing anticipated on the ICF world marathon championships in Ponte de Lima in Portugal in a number of weeks’ time.
“The new start at the picturesque Viljoensdrift Wine Estate allows the race to get under way on the flat water dammed by the Sliding Weir, and take on laps of marathon paddling and portaging that will provide a spectacle-friendly start to the race, before heading downriver for the rest of the first stage to Riggton Farm in Bonnievale,” a press release printed by Gameplan media learn.
The second stage of the race from Riggton Farm to Kam’Bati Resort stays unchanged.
The better of the native K2 crews shall be on the start-line, together with the winners of the final pre-Breede race Kenny Rice and Uli Hart, former winner Greg Louw and Matt Fenn, the powerhouse crew of Graeme Solomon and Anders Hart, Murray Starr and Dan Jacobs and Heinrich Schloms and Ernest van Riet, with Clint Cook and Tom Lovemore including an ominous menace.
Major gamers on the Breede River Canoe Marathon
Photo: John Hishin/
Gameplan Media
All them shall be anxious to make sure that they continue to be in touch with the 2017 world championships crew of Hank McGregor and Jasper Mocké, who’ve unashamedly entered the race to nice tune their racing forward of the world championships K2 race in Portugal.
In what may find yourself being a notable slice of Breede historical past, McGregor’s spouse Pippa has additionally entered along with her world champs K2 associate Jenna Nisbet, and a victory within the girls’s division may see the uncommon feat of a husband-and-wife Breede victory.
McGregor and Nisbet is not going to have all of it their very own method as a robust subject of girls’s K2 crews has assembled for the occasion, together with Candice Murray and final 12 months’s winner Kira Bester, Dusi winner Jordy Peek along with her associate Christy Shrimpton, and the junior crew of Neriyah Dill and Holly Smith that changed into one of many feminine pacesetters throughout this Breede season.
With the potent girls’s race doubtlessly stealing the limelight, there’s additionally an intriguing race for the combined doubles podium brewing, as a number of the nation’s high feminine paddlers workforce up with male companions for the two-day problem on the technical Breede River.
Team Euro Steel’s new signing Melanie van Niekerk will associate Scheepers Schoeman, Bianca Beavitt has her associate Crispin Thompson lined up for the race, and the robust Maties paddler Tracey Oellerman, who completed second in final 12 months’s womens K2 race, has co-opted Dom Leslie for a shot on the combined doubles podium.
The weekend has been devoted to the reminiscence of well-known paddler Giel van Deventer who died on the Breede River on 20 August. Every paddler will get a particular cap commemorating the lifetime of the Berg marathon icon, and the race medal that every finisher receives may even commemorate the impression that he had on the game.
The host membership Milnerton Canoe Club may even sponsor every entrant a bottle of wine to take residence ands take pleasure in in Van Deventer’s reminiscence.
The 2022 Breede River Canoe Marathon takes place on Saturday 3 and Sunday 4 September. More data will be discovered at http://breedemarathon.co.za/
